Quarantine rules lost in translation for German travellers

An electronic boarding pass and an inexperienced police officer helped two wayward German travellers cause a virus scare.

A Virgin plane at Melbourne Airport on Sunday. the German travellers were escorted by police to a Virgin Airlines flight with 176 people aboard. Picture: Ian Currie

An electronic boarding pass to catch a connecting flight to Melbourne and an inexperienced police officer saw Australia’s tough security measures lost in translation as two wayward German travellers sparked a major coronavirus scare and forced 176 people into isolation.

The airport bungle saw the Sydney police officer mistakenly allow a 53-year-old woman and her 15-year-old son to bypass hotel quarantine arrangements and fly direct to Melbourne without appropriate exemptions.

The NSW Police Force on Sunday took full responsibility for the decision, which allowed the pair to fly from Sydney to Melbourne on Saturday after stepping off a flight from Frankfurt via Tokyo.

Deputy Commissioner Jeff Loy put the bungle down to communication difficulties between the officer and the Germans.

“They had a conversation with an officer, and during that conversation there has been a misunderstanding and a lack of communication,” Mr Loy said.

“It was thought by the police officer that there was actually an exemption in place. We’ll own the mistake and we’ll move forward.”

The senior constable was on his second shift at the airport when the incident occurred, Mr Loy said, adding that the ­Germans had been cleared of wrongdoing.

the Virgin Terminal at Melbourne Airport, where two overseas passengers flew in from Sydney, on Sunday. Picture: Ian Currie

To strengthen procedures, all future quarantine exemptions will be personally reviewed by the police operations commander, he said.

A NSW government official said the officer had sought advice from his superiors at the Police Operations Centre once the German pair told him they were ­exempt. This is understood to have occurred while they were queuing for a bus to be taken to a quarantine hotel in Sydney.

The officer was told over the phone that documents were ­required, but the pair allegedly ­responded by saying that they did not have any documents, only an electronic boarding pass for their connecting flight. On this basis they were permitted to continue flying.

“He basically said, ‘I f..ked up, I didn’t know what else to do’,” the government official.

Both German travellers were escorted by police to the Virgin Airlines flight, boarding about midday and landing about 1.45pm with 176 other passengers and crew.

The bungle was uncovered by chance when the pair were ­offered assistance by a security guard in the Melbourne airport carpark; they had been trying to make their way to a quarantine hotel and were identified by the guard because they appeared lost.

Within hours a full-scale public health alert bearing the hallmarks of the Ruby Princess fiasco had been launched across both states as officials scrambled to track down passengers who had travelled on the same flight out of Sydney.

It also prompted a tense phone call between Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley to his NSW counterpart Brad Hazzard, seeking an explanation as to how the incident unfolded and a full review of the matter.

CCTV cameras at the airport filmed the pair collecting their luggage and then moving around the airport carpark where they were spotted by the security ­attendant.

They told him they had just ­arrived from Germany and were seeking to find their way to a hotel for quarantine arrangements. The matter was then raised with a duty manager and, soon after, Department of Health and Human Services staff.

In a statement, NSW police said more than 100,000 people had entered the NSW hotel quarantine program since March 29, with more than 5500 people currently isolating across 17 police-managed hotels.

Victorian Premier Daniel ­Andrews thanked the security ­attendant on Sunday and said the matter would be discussed at the next meeting of the national cabinet, stressing that he harboured no criticism towards NSW over the mishap. “No system, as we have just seen in Sydney, is zero risk. These things happen from time to time,” Mr Andrews said.

The two passengers will be tested for COVID-19 on Monday and if the results are returned negative then their fellow passengers on the Virgin flight will be able to leave quarantine.

Health Minister Greg Hunt told Sky News that he had asked Australian Border Force Commissioner Michael Outram to work with NSW to “understand the circumstances” that led to the travellers catching a flight to Victoria.

Mr Hunt said that “multiple layers of protection” were in place to protect Australians from COVID-19 and, while those safeguards were effective, “we want to make sure that every ring is ­impregnable”.

“There’s always risk when we’re dealing with (people coming in from) overseas and our task is to have these different layers or different rings of protection and it’s worked here,” Mr Hunt said.