Coronavirus: NSW Police probe Ruby Princess health report

Investigators question whether pressure was applied on the ship’s captain or doctor to downplay the sickness of their passengers.

Water police patrol the contaminated cruise ship Ruby Princess while it berths in Port Kembla south of Sydney, NSW, as crew members undergo questioning over the coronavirus outbreak. Picture: Simon Bullard

NSW Police Commissioner Michael Fuller has set a deadline of Sunday for the Ruby Princess to depart Australian waters, as investigators question whether pressure was applied on the ship’s captain or doctor to downplay the sickness of their passengers.

More than 600 cases of the corona­virus and 19 deaths in Australia have been linked to the ship.

Homicide detectives on Wednesday were preparing to download the contents of the ship’s voyage data recorder collected during a raid of the ship last Friday.

Their inquiries have tightened around the captain, the doctor and the reliability of their declarations to authorities about the number and severity of sick passengers on board the vessel.

At the time the ship docked in Sydney on March 19, it was one of 14 cruise liners urgently seeking to unload passengers after a government declaration that Australia’s borders were going to be closed. “What pressure may or may not have been on captains and on doctors, that would be crucial to the criminal investigation and the commission of inquiry,” Mr Fuller told The Australian.

Asked if this meant personnel may have softened the medical data ahead of the ship’s arrival, he said: “That will be a really important question that needs answering. It’s a crucial question.”

The ship is languishing between a wheat silo and a coal stockpile in Port Kembla harbour. Mr Fuller said he had held out repeated offers to Princess Cruises, parent company of the Ruby Princess, to permit anyone on board the ship to disembark and board a charter flight home if they were healthy enough to do so.

With Princess Cruises stifled by an onerous but necessary clearance process, a spokesman for the company said it was working with government agencies, including Australian Border Force and NSW Health, to repatriate those on board.

Mr Fuller said some crew were reluctant to leave the ship as, ­despite the discomfort of quarantine, they were still receiving “high-level” healthcare on the five-star luxury liner. “I’ve drawn a line in the sand and I want this ship gone by Sunday,” he said.

“I’m standing on those digs at the moment. I’ve been making the offer to allow healthy crew members to come off and fly home. That clearly hasn’t progressed.”

There are 1056 crew in quarantined on the vessel, of whom 140 have tested positive.

On Sunday, the ship is due to set sail for America, although it remains unclear whether US authorities will accept it on arrival.

Three inquiries have been launched into the circumstances of the Ruby Princess’s arrival in Sydney: a police inquiry, a special commission of inquiry and a coronial inquiry, which will be contingent on the findings of a police investigation.

The NSW Coroner will need to decide whether an inquest into the deaths is warranted.

Princess Cruises president Jan Swartz issued a statement on Wednesday expressing her support for the announcement of a special commission of inquiry, announced by NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian after weeks of pressure from the state opposition.

“This commission of inquiry is an opportunity for all to learn from this tragic event,” Ms Swartz said. “There are no doubt important ­lessons to be learned.”

Central to the investigation is the ongoing fact-finding around the ship’s Human Health report, submitted to Australian authorities in the days leading up to its arrival. The report is what NSW Health officials relied upon to declare the ship “low risk” on arrival.

Since docking in Sydney on March 19, the ship has been linked to more than 600 cases of the coronavirus nationally and 19 deaths, the latest a woman aged in her 60s, whose death at a Canberra hospital was announced on Wednesday.