Queensland hotel quarantine program over with Wellcamp quarantine hub operational

After 127,772 people went through hotel quarantine in Queensland, the program is officially over with the opening of Toowoomba’s quarantine hub.

Queensland’s hotel quarantine program is officially over, with the newly completed Wellcamp quarantine hub at Toowoomba to house new arrivals needing to quarantine.

At a site inspection of the Queensland Regional Accommodation Centre, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the last of those in hotel quarantine would be released on Wednesday afternoon, with the opening of the first 500 beds of the Toowoomba quarantine hub allowing the state to move on from its hotel program.

“During the height of the pandemic, 127,772 people in total went through hotel quarantine in Queensland, 77,000 of those were international and the remainder domestic,” she said.

“Hotel quarantine kept Queenslanders safe during the two years of the pandemic, we really weathered the storm.

“At the peak we had on a single day 5014 people across 22 hotels, and police committed to Covid operations were around 12,000 per day, including 263 on hotel quarantine.”

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Deputy Premier Steven Miles (centre) visit the Wellcamp quarantine hub. Picture: Nev Madsen.

Ms Palaszczuk said the state-of-the-art facility would be put to good use, including for housing unvaccinated international arrivals, seasonal workforces whose vaccinations don’t meet TGA requirements and for people needing to isolate but who cannot at home.

“We talked about this in August, construction started in October and today it is operational,” Ms Palaszczuk said.

“I’m very proud of this facility, it’s something that Queensland has supported and something that we have absolutely for the future. We don’t know what’s coming around the corner, and this facility will have a whole range of uses.”

John Wagner with Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Deputy Premier Steven Miles visit the Wellcamp quarantine hub. Wednesday, February 16, 2022. Picture: Nev Madsen.

In the past two weeks since it began to take guests, Deputy Premier Steven Miles said “almost 60” people had stayed at Wellcamp, a mix of unvaccinated travellers arriving by air and mariners, but said it was “impossible” to estimate how many people would need to stay at Wellcamp over the next 12 months.

“We anticipate an ongoing number of arrivals,” he said.

“The number of people in hotel quarantine varied considerably throughout the pandemic, we had to be ready to take rapid surges as the pandemic played out. This facility will give us base capacity as well as surge capacity.”

Deputy Premier Steven Miles at the Wellcamp quarantine hub. Picture: Nev Madsen.

Mr Miles said after the government had outlaid the cost of hiring 22 hotels they were “very easily able to identify what would represent good value” when it came to investing in building Wellcamp, despite declining to reveal how much taxpayers forked out for Wellcamp, insisting the bill was commercial-in-confidence.

“We also had an understanding of what other similar facilities were costing to be built,” he said, defending the government’s decision not to put the construction of the facility out to tender.

“We had a very open book arrangement here where we were able to work with the Wagners to find the most efficient way of getting a purpose-built facility up and running.”

Wagner Corporation chairman John Wagner said up to 85 per cent of everything at the facility had been sourced from the Toowoomba region.

After repeated questions on the cost of the hub, the Premier pointed at the Commonwealth’s facility due to open later this year and made an ultimatum that they would reveal the cost of Wellcamp if the federal government revealed how much Pinkenba cost.

“If at some stage they want to release those costs we are more than happy to release our costs,” she said.

Pressed on why that information was not released, Ms Palaszczuk said there seemed to be “one standard for the state and one standard for the federal government”, while again insisting Wellcamp was commercial-in-confidence.