Ruby Princess coronavirus threat outweighed right to freedom of liberty

Critical failings by NSW Health allowed COVID-infected guests to disembark the Ruby Princess cruise liner.

Commissioner Bret Walker SC leaves the Ruby Princes inquiry in Sydney on Wednesday. Picture: John Feder

Critical failings by NSW Health – including an “unacceptable” delay in testing passenger swab samples and its reliance on an out-dated biosecurity risk assessment form – allowed COVID-infected guests to disembark the Ruby Princess cruise liner and scatter across the country in the nation’s worst coronavirus outbreak.

A special commission of inquiry into the fiasco has heard all passengers and crew should have been forced to wait on board the troubled liner until testing was complete, and placed in mandatory, government-run quarantine as soon as the first person tested positive for the contagion.

The scandal, which has since been linked to more than 20 deaths across Australia, unfolded after the Ruby Princess docked in Sydney on March 19. Classified a low biosecurity risk, the ship’s 2700 passengers were permitted to debark and return home more than 24 hours before testing confirmed some were infected with the novel coronavirus.

In his closing submissions to the inquiry, counsel assisting Richard Beasley SC said that even though NSW Health considered the ship to be low-risk the swabs should have been tested without delay.

“I would describe that as a serious mistake,” Mr Beasley said. “The swabs were taken off the ship at 3am … and these samples should have been tested immediately. I know that might have meant an early morning for someone in a lab but in a pandemic that might just be part of the job.

“Before those test results were known, a health assessment panel should have boarded the ship and taken swabs from everyone who was a suspected case of COVID-19 immediately. All passengers should have been confined to their cabins.

“As soon as a positive result was known, which would have been still in the early hours of the morning of the 19th of March, the only practical course is then that all passengers and crew are securely removed from the ship because they are all suspect cases of COVID and taken into what I will just call quarantine.

“No home isolation, secure transfer to quarantine. There is no aspect of liberty, cost or inconvenience that outweighs that approach once you have 4000 suspect cases on a cruise ship.”

NSW Health classified the liner as low risk after its expert panel’s pre-arrival assessment form reported only 0.94 per cent of passengers were suffering from an influenza-like illness.

It was based on the number of passengers who reported having a fever and excluded those who were suffering from a respiratory illness, even though a guideline change by the Communicable Diseases Network of Australia on March 10 highlighted the fact COVID-19 symptoms did not always include a fever.

Mr Beasley also encouraged Commissioner Bret Walker SC, whose final report into the outbreak is scheduled to be handed down next month, to find that Carnival Australia had a “very clear obligation” to inform passengers – in particular elderly and vulnerable guests – that there were suspected cases of novel coronavirus on board the ship.