Coronavirus: Mining camps for overseas travellers in Queensland

A 1300-room workers camp outside Gladstone, in central Queensland, is among facilities being considered by the Palaszczuk government to quarantine international travellers.

The Hotel Grand Chancellor in Spring Hill, Brisbane has been at the centre of an outbreak of the UK strain of COVID-19. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Dan Peled

A 1300-room workers camp outside Gladstone, in central Queensland, is among facilities being considered by the Palaszczuk government to quarantine international travellers.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk confirmed on Thursday she was planning to accommodate overseas arrivals in mining camps after an outbreak last week of the UK variant of COVID-19 in a Brisbane quarantine hotel.

Ms Palaszczuk will raise the plan at national cabinet next Friday, seeking approval from the federal government to change international flight destinations that are closer to hubs near the camps.

At least three workers camps are understood to be under consideration, including the Decmil-owned Homeground Accommodation Village, at Calliope, southwest of Gladstone.

Health authorities, police and Decmil representatives held discussions on Thursday over the proposal, first mooted last year.

Police backed the shift to the camps mid-last year before the proposal was abandoned with the then fall-off in community transmissions.

After the plan was revealed in The Australian on Thursday, Ms Palaszczuk said she would raise the matter with the federal government next Friday.

“We are going to look at all options and one of those options is to look at some of the mining camps that we have in Queensland,” she said. “Now, for a start, some of these mining camps are four-star.

“My understanding is most of them, the ones we’re looking at, have balconies so there’s a lot of fresh air for guests and also, too, there’s the capacity for all of the staff and cleaners and everyone to be based on those sites as well.

“I think this is a rational option and if we are dealing with a strain which is up to 70 per cent more infectious, I think we need to be really serious about it.”

Queensland recorded four new cases of coronavirus overnight on Wednesday, all in hotel quarantine. Two were returned travellers from South Africa and two from the US.

There are now 27 active cases in the state after more than 13,000 tests were conducted in 24 hours.

None of the positive cases were at the Hotel Grand Chancellor, which was evacuated and shut down on Thursday after a spread of the UK variant on its seventh floor.

A major investigation is under way into what caused the cluster that’s so far infected four returned travellers at the hotel, as well as a hotel cleaner and her partner. More than 220 staff are being tested and isolated, along with 147 former guests, figures revised down since Thursday.

Furthermore, 406 contacts of the cleaner and her partner have been contacted, tested and isolated. “So far none of them have tested positive,” Ms Palaszczuk said.

Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young had “very little concern” that the UK variant had spread in the community. “I am very confident we have found the close contacts of both the cleaner and her partner and because we had those three days that people weren’t leaving their home, and people followed those instructions brilliantly, I have very little concern that that spread in the community.”