Coronavirus: first evacuees set to leave Christmas Island on Monday

The first Australians evacuated from Wuhan are due to go home from Christmas Island on a government charter jet on Monday.

Li Ping Gu, a Wuhan evacuee on Christmas Island, is due to return to the Australian mainland on Monday. Picture: Colin Murty

The first Australians evacuated from Wuhan are due to go home from Christmas Island on a government charter jet on Monday.

The first of three flights was scheduled to leave the Indian Ocean territory at 8am local time (noon AEDT) on Monday. Provided evacuees at the rem­ote ­centre remain virus-free, The Australian understands the flights will deliver 242 evacuees to various capital cities.

The remaining 36 evacuees on the island were due to leave the island’s repurposed immigration detention centre on Wednesday. Those are men, women and children who left Wuhan on an Air New Zealand rescue flight that took New Zealand citizens to Auckland. The Australians on board that plane to Auckland then got on a separate Australian government charter to Christmas Island, arriving some 48 hours after the first evacuees.

There are 266 Australians less than halfway through their quarantine period at the former workers’ camp at Howard Springs outside Darwin.

Late on Thursday, there had been three known coronavirus tests, all for evacuees at Christmas Island and none for evacuees at Howard Springs, and none of those test results were positive.

The humanitarian evacuation mission was arranged at very short notice but is so far considered highly successful.