Coronavirus: ‘Flying doctors’ treated as criminals

Australian doctors, who were publicly admonished for dodging quarantine laws, claim police told them they could travel home.

Australian doctors, who were publicly admonished for dodging strict quarantine laws by boarding interstate flights after returning to Sydney from Chile, claim that NSW police told them they could travel to their homes.

The 33 doctors were accused of defying police orders to go into quarantine at an airport hotel after arriving in Sydney on a flight from Santiago in Chile at about 11pm on Friday — and instead moving to the domestic terminal and flying home to several regional cities and towns across NSW.

NSW police said they had managed to track down six of the doctors at Sydney Airport on Saturday, but that 27 of them had already departed on planes to other states.

Jenny Dowd, who was among the 27 doctors to board a domestic flight, said she spent Friday night in Sydney before travelling home to Melbourne on Saturday morning after being reassured she was allowed to do so.

When she touched down in the Victorian capital, she said she was met by “six or seven” officers who accused her of breaching a public health order.

“We asked two or three times if we could go home and the NSW police told us yes, multiple times,” Dr Dowd told The Australian.

“The police were very clear, and they said we could go, so I got on the plane. You can imagine my shock when I was met with federal police upon arrival in Melbourne. I felt like a criminal.”

She said she had been demonised by the Prime Minister and NSW police after they publicly claimed she and 32 colleagues had ignored a public health order to undergo a 14-day quarantine at designated hotels in Sydney.

“They did the wrong thing,” Scott Morrison said during a press conference on Sunday morning. “Law enforcement authorities will be following up those cases across ­jurisdictions.”

Dr Dowd had been attending a health convention on board the Roald Amundsen cruise ship which had been unable to dock at its final destination in Chile after the country closed its ports due to concerns over COVID-19 — before being repatriated with 76 colleagues last Friday.

Endocrinologist Shane Hamlin, who was also on the flight, said there was “gross, massive confusion” after they arrived in Sydney but that they had definitely been told they were permitted to catch onward domestic flights.

“The police wrote down our flight details and said we could leave in the morning,” Dr Hamlin told The Australian. “They told me to catch a flight to Melbourne and they even wanted to know who would be there to pick me up.”

He said he was one of six doctors later stopped at Sydney Airport and issued with a letter signed by NSW Health Department medical adviser Laura Collie ordering them to remain in the city.

“They made the rules up overnight and changed them between 3.30am and 7am,” he said.

“We had already checked in with Qantas and were at the airport when they came waving public health orders at us.”

Perth doctor Glen Lo, who is in quarantine at the Rydges Hotel in Sydney, said: “We were given an Isolation Declaration Card which I filled out and signed. It said to go home and isolate.

“We landed Friday. We waited until 2am for the NSW Chief Medical Officer to decide whether to quarantine,” Dr Lo said on Twitter on Sunday. “The junior NSW policeman processing us got confused and told us to go home via transit fights. So, we left. They told us to go.”

Heavy police and army presence for the first lot of international arrivals landing and being put on buses heading to hotels to be quarantined at Sydney international airport on the 29th of March 2020.