Coronavirus: WA premier bars ship over infected passengers, calls for Commonwealth help

WA Premier Mark McGowan has asked the Commonwealth to help remove a cruise ship off Perth carrying infected passengers.

25/03/2020 West Australian medics were aboard the foreign cruise ship MV Artania (Rottnest Island in the background) as it anchored off Fremantle on Wednesday. Picture: Colin Murty/The Australian

West Australian premier Mark McGowan has asked the Commonwealth to help remove a German cruise ship anchored off Perth with at least seven European passengers who have coronavirus.

Mr McGowan sent a medical team to the Artania on Wednesday to test passengers who were sick and found seven people with COVID-19. Another two people were unwell and there were concerns they may also be infected. There are about 800 passengers onbaord, most of them German.

Mr McGowan has now asked the Commonwealth government to deal directly with the German government to ensure the ship leaves.

“Yes. I would like the ship to leave. They have travel plans that they should adhere to and we would like the Commonwealth to ensure that happens,” he said.

“This ship needs to leave immediately … the sooner that ship gets home, the better it will be.”

There are no Australians on the vessel, which Mr McGowan has refused to allow to dock.

“Western Australia’s position is this: if the seven passengers need to come onshore for medical treatment they will have to go to a Commonwealth facility such as a defence force base,” he said.

“If this occurred then Germany and the Australian government can organise a plane to come and pick those passengers up and take them home.

“We are working with the Australian government to do this immediately.

“The Artania cruise ship must continue on its journey to South Africa urgently. This ship needs to leave immediately. I want the Commonwealth to make that happen.”

Mr McGowan said the two governments may decide to fly passengers out.

“If it requires some sort of flights out of Germany to make that happen subject to the strictest of quarantine then that might be a resolution,” he said.

The Artania has 832 passengers and 515 crew — none of whom are believed to be Australian. It is understood many are German.

The crisis is unfolding as WA scrambled to boost the capacity of its hospitals which until this week has only 127 intensive care beds.

Mr McGowan was advised there were no Australians on-board the German ship, and 25 passengers were sick.

The ship owner Phoenix Reisen told The Australian in a written statement that one passenger who left the ship on March 16 had been found to have COVID-19

On Wednesday Mr McGowan said he would provide help to cruise ship passengers whose lives were at risk but he would not allow a repeat of the Ruby Princess disaster.

He would not allow another vessel, the Magnifica, to dock at Fremantle south of Perth on Wednesday after it was turned away from Dubai. The vessel refuelled and took on supplies at Fremantle on Tuesday and no crew or passengers were allowed to disembark. The Swiss-owned Magnifica, which on Tuesday reported no respiratory illness on-board, set sail for the United Arab Emirates but turned around because it was told the port there was closed.

“I will not allow what happened in Sydney, with the Ruby Princess, to happen here,” Mr McGowan said on Wednesday.

“An increasing number of confirmed cases in Western Australia can be traced back to cruise ships. As it stands, around a quarter of our COVID-19 cases are people who have returned from cruise ships – not even counting the people who have contracted it from them.

“I am not going take any chances on this issue.”

Magnifica was on Wednesday looping off the WA coast carrying about 1700 passengers. That vessel and the German-owned Artania – with 800 passengers and 500 crew – carry no Australians.

But the McGowan Labor government is making no exceptions for Australian cruise ship passengers either. A total of 798 Australians are among 950 passengers on-board the Vasco da Gama that was steaming towards Fremantle on Wednesday but they will not be allowed to go home until they have completed 14 days quarantine on Rottnest Islans.