Coronavirus: Transplant recipient runs quarantine gauntlet after delay

A young Brisbane mum recovering from a kidney and pancreas transplant took matters into her own hands and ran the bureaucratic gauntlet to get into Queensland.

Kidney transplant recipient Amy Dawson at home. Picture: Glenn Hunt

A Brisbane mother recovering from a kidney transplant took matters into her own hands and ran the bureaucratic gauntlet to get into Queensland after spending more than a week in Sydney awaiting an exemption to quarantine at home.

Armed with a stack of notes from her doctors in Sydney, Amy Dawson and her husband were eventually given permission by a health official at Brisbane airport to head home.

When Ms Dawson was discharged from Sydney’s Westmead Hospital after the surgery more than three weeks ago, she was told to apply by phone for an “urgent” exemption to cross the Queensland border without being forced into hotel quarantine and she would receive a response within 24 hours. She received no reply.

Phone calls to the offices of Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Health Minister Steven Miles ended with Ms Dawson being told there were “thousands of applications” for exemptions and to be patient.

“I kept getting passed from one person to another; nobody could tell us anything at all,” she said. “So after a week and a half, my husband and I made a decision to get the quarantine started, just to come home.”

A health officer at the airport was convinced by the specialists’ letters and doctor’s reports they carried and let the couple self-isolate at home in Forest Lake with their four-year-old son. “We’re just lucky we did make that call and got that health officer,” she said.

She said the $2800 fee to quarantine in a Queensland hotel was a high price to pay after the extensive surgery, which can be performed only in Sydney or Melbourne.

Ms Dawson said there were several Queensland patients at the Westmead Hospital still searching for a way to get home.

Stories similar to Ms Dawson’s prompted Ms Palaszczuk to create a new unit to fast-track border exemptions for “distressing” cases of northern NSW patients denied medical care in Queensland.