States push quarantine showdown with Scott Morrison
Scott Morrison is heading for a national cabinet stoush with the states over who should take responsibility for quarantine.
Scott Morrison is heading for a national cabinet stoush with the states over who should take responsibility for the coronavirus quarantine program, with a string of hotel worker infections leading to snap lockdowns and tougher restrictions across the country.
Ahead of a national cabinet meeting on Friday, Queensland Deputy Premier Steven Miles said it was “time for the federal government to contribute” to the quarantine program and claimed the Prime Minister had been “all care and no responsibility”.
Mr Miles’ comments come after Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said he would talk to the federal government about “bespoke” accommodation for returning travellers, and West Australian Premier Mark McGowan called for the federal government to take more responsibility in the quarantine scheme.
The national cabinet meeting comes at the end of a five-day lockdown in Perth put in place after a quarantine hotel security guard contracted the virulent British COVID-19 variant from a returned traveller and after stricter restrictions were introduced in Melbourne for a similar breach.
Mr Morrison has defended the use of hotels for the program and urged state leaders to have “a sense of realism … and a sense of proportion”.
He said hotels remained the most effective way to deliver quarantine for travellers at the scale that Australia needed to deliver.
“That remains the advice I have from my experts and the alternative is not that clear to me,” he said.
More than 211,000 people had travelled to Australia and there had only been a handful of coronavirus cases transmitted into the community, he said.
Mr Morrison wrote to Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk on Thursday rejecting a proposal to quarantine returned travellers in Gladstone.
He told The Australian it would be devastating for the community and the economy if there was an outbreak in central Queensland.
But he was considering a different plan to house up to 6000 people at Wellcamp airport west of Toowoomba at a yet-to-be-built, purpose-designed facility.
Federal authorities are understood to have a long list of questions to be answered before making any commitments.
“The commonwealth is open where there are good proposals, very comprehensive proposals,” Mr Morrison said on Thursday.
John Wagner, whose company built the Wellcamp airport, said stage one of the proposed facility could be built within six weeks and would include 1000 rooms and a 30-bed hospital. It could then be expanded to accommodate up to 6000 people and would be divided into precincts for returning Australians, overseas students and seasonal farm workers.
“The planes can land at the airport and we can bring these people to the terminal and move them to the accommodation with no interaction, no risk to the community,’’ Mr Wagner said.
“The bigger picture is that we not only have to repatriate Australians, but there (are) 100,000 international students that want to come back to study at our universities and our farms are desperate for pickers.”
Mr Miles, who as Queensland health minister last year led the state’s response to the outbreak of the virus, said the emergence of the more infectious strains of the virus showed the need for an overhaul of hotel quarantine.
It was time for the federal government to partner with the states who had assumed responsibility for hotel quarantine for a year with the exception of the Howard Springs camp near Darwin, he said.
The federal government has helped operate Howard Springs at a cost of $240m.
“The one thing that has kept Australia safe is hotel quarantine, which was put in place and run by the states,” Mr Miles said. “We are facing more infectious strains of the virus and have seen in three states new strains of the virus escape hotel quarantine.”
Perth went into a snap five-day lockdown on Sunday after a hotel quarantine security guard tested positive to the British strain of the coronavirus.
West Australian authorities do not know how the guard, who did not come into contact with returned travellers, contracted the virus but concluded it was likely through aerosol transmission when a hotel door was open.
Brisbane was sent into a three-day lockdown in early January after a cleaner at the Hotel Grand Chancellor contracted the highly contagious British variant.
Government sources said the police report into the infection, to be released on Friday, was not conclusive about how the virus was spread but suggested it was likely through aerosol transmission or through surface contact.
Mr McGowan also criticised the commonwealth for rejecting his proposal of using Christmas Island and defence bases close to Perth as quarantine facilities.
“We have had 37,000 people go through our hotel quarantine system and this is perhaps our first breach or infection of one of the staff members in there,” the Premier said.
“What this shows is the transmissibility of these strains of the virus is higher, and we obviously have to learn from that.”
Health Department secretary Brendan Murphy said that, although new COVID-19 variants were more transmissible, the management in quarantine had essentially been the same. “The states and territory … have done a huge amount of work in tightening and improving hotel quarantine,” Professor Murphy said.
“The most particular advances have been daily testing of all the quarantine workers, so you can pick someone who might pick up the virus very quickly; insisting on PPE; good quality CCTV; moving some people in some states when they are positive to a hotel that doesn’t mix in with negative people.”
Raina MacIntyre, who heads the Kirby Institute’s biosecurity program, said the current system was sustainable and a successful defence against coronavirus. But it could be strengthened by addressing airborne transmission of the disease, meaning better ventilation and N95 respirators should be used, she said.
“Our infection control guidelines do not discuss ventilation because we don’t acknowledge in the guidelines that airborne transmission is an important mode of spread for the virus,” Professor MacIntyre said. “You would select hotels on the basis of adequacy of ventilation.”
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