Coronavirus: charter flights to end ship standoff

The stalemate over a German cruise ship docked south of Perth was close to ending in a series of charter flights on Sunday night.

New Zealand passengers from the cruise ship Vasco da Gama are seen arriving at Perth airport on TransPerth buses to catch a direct flight back to New Zealand on Saturday. Picture: Colin Murty

The stalemate over a coronavirus-infected German cruise ship that docked south of Perth with more than 1300 Europeans aboard was close to ending in a series of charter flights on Sunday night.

Australian Border Force and West Australian police began to usher 819 passengers off the Artania at Fremantle Port and directly on to buses shortly after 7pm (AEDT).

They were taken directly to the tarmac at Perth airport to meet four flights bound for Frankfurt.

About 500 crew were expected to remain aboard and sail the ship home to Germany. Up to 46 passengers with COVID-19 would be treated in Perth private hospitals, under an arrangement brokered between the Australian, German and McGowan governments. WA Premier Mark McGowan described the cruise ship crisis as a nightmare.

“It’s a diabolical situation dealing with these cruise ships,” the Premier said, adding that the passengers were the federal government’s responsibility.

“Some people seem to think there are simple solutions here. There aren’t.”

As the number of unwell passengers aboard Artania grew almost daily, there were fears the state’s health system could be overwhelmed. WA had a total of 160 intensive care beds in the combined public and private hospital systems on Friday. On Sunday, eight were being used to treat people with coronavirus including three people from the Artania

Another ship that docked at Fremantle carrying mostly Australians, the Vasco da Gama, reported nobody aboard was ill but WA Police Commissioner Chris Dawson used his state of emergency powers to block it from disembarking passengers, including 200 West Australians.

All passengers will instead be taken to quarantine on Rottnest Island and at the Duxton Hotel in the centre of Perth.

Some passengers of Vasco da Gama felt that quarantine was unnecessary because they lived just a few minutes from the port and could self isolate at home, but Mr McGowan dug in.

“We are not going to have a Sydney Harbour fiasco on our watch,” he said, referring to the decision to allow Ruby Princess passengers to disembark at Circular Quay on March 19. As of Sunday, there were an estimated 311 infected passengers from the Ruby Princess cruise ship after 2700 passengers were deemed “low risk” before they were allowed to disembark in Sydney.

A 75-year-old Queensland woman who died on Sunday is the fourth Ruby Princess passenger to die from the virus. There are now an estimated 311 infected passengers across the country, 189 of them in NSW alone, and health authorities are steeled for a second wave of infections.

NSW Health has also confirmed the number of infected passengers from two other cruise ships allowed to dock in Sydney on the same day as the Ruby Princess has also continued to soar: the Ovation of the Seas now has 23 passengers infected while there are 59 confirmed cases for Voyager of the Seas. In South Australia, infected patients linked to the Ruby Princess now account for 61 of the state’s total of 287.

In Western Australia, seven of 33 new cases confirmed on Sunday were cruise ship passengers.

Aboard the Artania, cruise ship entertainer musician Adax Dorsam told a German newspaper that doctors had been taking passengers’ temperatures each morning and on Monday he felt a light scratching in the throat and was tired and weak. But he played a concert that night for 450 guests.