Coronavirus: Doctors free to go home as detain order revoked

NSW Police have quietly revoked a controversial public health order that led to the forced detention of 25 medical professionals.

NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant. Picture: AAP

A controversial public health order that led to the forced detention of 25 medical professionals after they were publicly admonished for allegedly dodging strict quarantine laws has been quietly revoked.

In an extraordinary backflip, NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant asked health officials on Sunday to advise the group that they were “no longer” a risk to public health.

The letter sent to the detained medical professionals on April 5, a copy of which was viewed by The Australian, explains they can be released, cutting their hotel quarantine period short by six days.

“I now consider that (the recipient) is personally no longer a risk to public health (and I) hereby revoke the public health order effective immediately,” the letter says.

Endocrinologist Shane Hamlin, who returned home to Melbourne on Sunday after he was quarantined at the InterContinental Hotel in Sydney, urged NSW Health and NSW Police to apologise for their actions.

“They publicly vilified us and jeopardised our reputations,” he told The Australian.

“It was insulting, it was wrong and we just want them to admit they stuffed up and apologise.”

In the letter, NSW Health says they “rarely issued” public health orders, and conceded “no protocols” were in place that outlined the circumstances in which a public health order could be reviewed or revoked.

The medical professionals 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 March 27. Instead, they moved to the domestic terminal and attempted to fly home to several cities across Australia.

The Australian understands the order was revoked after an intense, behind-the-scenes lobbying effort by the Australian Medical Association.

“It’s been a circus,” said radiologist Glen Lo, after returning home to Perth. “We were briefly an attraction, useful for political gain, then became a liability.”

Multiple legal experts also said the doctors had been detained ­“arbitrarily” under potentially “false charges” after members of the group broke ranks and claimed they had been wrongly accused of threatening public health.

“These people were effectively wrongly detained for a week; it’s disturbing,” barrister Greg Barns said. “It highlights the danger of granting sweeping powers to ­bureaucrats.”

The group had been forced into a 14-day hotel quarantine a day earlier than specified by the federal government after they were served with a public health order that claimed their “behaviour” posed a “risk to public health”.

The two doctors who signed the order, Stephen Corbett and Laura Collie, allegedly had reservations about the document.

A NSW Health statement said: “NSW Health formed a reasonable belief these individuals may have been exposed to the virus.”