Coronavirus: Darwin next stop for China evacuees

Australians returning from areas affected by the coronavirus outbreak are likely to be quarantined outside Darwin.

The Manigurr-ma camp outside Darwin is expected to be used for coronavirus evacuees.

Australians returning from areas affected by the deadly coronavirus outbreak are likely to be quarantined at a workers camp outside Darwin once facilities on Christmas Island are full.

Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner confirmed on Thursday that he had been called by federal Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton about the possibility of using the Inpex workers’ camp as a possible site for quarantining Australians evacuated from China’s Hubei province.

Australian government offic­ials are assessing the site for suitability. Mr Gunner discussed the outbreak with Scott Morrison at the weekend, flagging the 3500-bed workers village as a possible quarantine centre.

“We obviously would be open to the federal government coming to us and saying that they need a hand,” Mr Gunner said.

A special team is understood to have been created to prepare to help manage quarantined returnees and inspections were being undertak­en to see if the workers camp was suitable.

Darwin was a preferred ­location because it was close to Asia and had been a possible stop on the route of the first flight back from China last month, meaning some of the necessary preparation to ­accept passengers had already been done.

The Manigurr-ma accommod­ation village, 30km outside Darwin­, was built by Japanese energy giant Inpex in 2012 to house workers building the Darwin Harbour component of the $55bn Ichthys liquefied natural gas project.

Consideration of the site comes ahead of a second Qantas rescue flight to evacuate Australians and Australian residents from the coronavirus epicentre of Hubei province. The flight is expected to land in the provincial capital of Wuhan by the weekend, while a third flight could also be arranged to get Australians out of the virus-hit region.

As the death toll from the disease hit 563, and global infections reached more than 28,200, Australian government officials were drawing up contingency plans for a wider outbreak.

The first Qantas rescue flight repatriated 240 citizens and permanent residents, who are now in quarantine on Christmas Island, apart from a couple who were taken to Perth awaiting the birth of their child. Another 35 Australians evacuated by the New Zealand government arrived on Christmas Island on Thursday, bringing the number of evacuees there to 273.

The Manigurr-ma centre can sleep up to 3500 people and boasts medical facilities, a commercial kitchen and dining area, and exercise and recreation ­options. However, it was built to accommodate single people rather than families.

As of Thursday, 15 coronavirus cases had been detected in Aust­ralia: four in NSW, four in Victoria, five in Queensland, and two in South Australia. Three Australians have fully recovered from the disease while the others are said to be in a stable condition.

All of the Australian cases have come from Wuhan, except one in NSW who had contact in China with a confirmed case in Wuhan.

The Prime Minister said the virus had not yet demonstrated the same potential for economic damage as SARS, but the current size of the Chinese economy and the new disease’s rate of transmission made it “a bit of an unknown”.

“There’s not a lot of good news here but when the previous viruses hit, international tourism to Australia fell by 11 per cent in one quarter, in the next quarter it bounced back 16 per cent,” Mr Morrison told Sydney radio station 2GB.