Coronavirus: crew still at sea as inquiry resumes

500 crew members onboard the Ruby Princess will still be at sea when the special commission into the fiasco surrounding its Sydney docking resumes.

‘Repatriation of our crew is very high priority and we will be pursuing this with vigour once ruby Princess reaches the Phillippines’ said a Princess Cruises spokeperson. Picture: Matrix Pictures

The 500 crew members aboard the Ruby Princess cruise ship will still be at sea — and enjoying all the perks of a well-earned holiday — when the special commission of inquiry into the fiasco surrounding its docking in Sydney resumes this week.

The 1542-cabin liner was on Sunday evening roughly 200km off the northern coast of Papua New Guinea, directly south of Manus Island, as it continues to make its way to Manila more than a week and a half after departing Port Kembla on the NSW south coast.

A crew member on board the ship said they had been told by management that the plan was to disembark the roughly 500 crew members still on board in The ­Philippines’ capital after a quarantine period of at least 14 days from their planned arrival this ­Thursday.

Filipino crew members would then be permitted to proceed home assuming Manila’s lockdown — which is due to expire on May 15 — was lifted.

After that, arrangements would be made to transfer other crew members back to their home countries on commercial airlines or aboard charter flights. Until then, the crew member said, staff onboard — most of whom had been quarantined in staterooms usually reserved for high-paying guests for more than a month — were allowed out of their cabins to eat at the buffet.

“We get to go out only to eat in the buffet,” he said.

“But with very strict guidelines — including social distancing, wearing of PPE, washing of hands.

“Then after we eat, we go back directly to our staterooms.”

The NSW special commission of inquiry is slated to hold its next public hearings on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, having earlier had two hearing days late last month.

Attending those hearings were a number of officials who were on board the Ruby Princess before it made its way out of Australian territorial waters, including its senior doctor, Ilse Von Watzdorf, and hotel general manager Charles Verwall.

A Princess Cruises spokesman said in a statement: “Repatriation of our crew is very high priority and we will be pursuing this with vigour once Ruby Princess reaches The Philippines.”

The cruise liner set off a corona­virus bomb when 2700 passengers were allowed to disembark at Circular Quay in Sydney on March 19 without being subjected to health checks — even though some passengers on board were showing signs of respiratory ­illness.

Since then more than 664 passengers have tested positive for coronavirus and 21 Australians have died of complications relating to the virus.

The ship has also been linked to cluster outbreaks in northwest Tasmania and New Zealand.