Health minister Mark Butler says six people from MC Hondius plus flight crew from charter plane to be isolated for weeksFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, <a href="https://app.
Passengers arrive on a second evacuation flight from Tenerife at Eindhoven air base, the Netherlands. The flight, organised by Australia, carried several Australian passengers, a New Zealander and a British passenger from the cruise ship MV Hondius, which was affected by a hantavirus outbreak.
Photograph: Rob Engelaar/EPA View image in fullscreen Passengers arrive on a second evacuation flight from Tenerife at Eindhoven air base, the Netherlands. The flight, organised by Australia, carried several Australian passengers, a New Zealander and a British passenger from the cruise ship MV Hondius, which was affected by a hantavirus outbreak.
Photograph: Rob Engelaar/EPA ‘Difficult’ mission to repatriate Australian hantavirus cruise passengers en route to long Perth quarantine Health minister Mark Butler says six people from MC Hondius plus flight crew from charter plane to be isolated for weeks Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Australians and New Zealanders who were aboard the deadly hantavirus-hit cruise ship will undergo the first three weeks of their quarantine at the Bullsbrook national resilience centre, just outside Perth.
The flight crew that brings them back to the country will have to join them, Australia’s health minister, Mark Butler, said.
He confirmed a last-minute change of plan will see the six people who had been travelling aboard the MV Hondius spend up to two days in the Netherlands instead of returning direct from Tenerife.
They were due to land in the Netherlands on Tuesday morning, Australian time, on the first leg of a complex operation to repatriate them, Butler said.
View image in fullscreen Bullsbrook national resilience centre.
Photograph: Multiplex They will transit to a quarantine hotel before a charter flight brings them to Australia.
“This is a difficult arrangement to make,” Butler told ABC News on Tuesday morning.
“You’ve got to have crew that are willing to isolate at the end of the flight, you’ve got to have a flight that has some refuelling arrangements put in place between the Netherlands and Australia … And it’s important that we’ve put those quarantine arrangements in place, ready to go when they do land in Australia.” The government nevertheless expected the four Australians, one permanent resident and one New Zealand citizen to be back in Australia by the end of the week. As of late Monday night, it was understood none of them were displaying symptoms of the virus.
“They’re only able to stay in the Netherlands for a maximum of 48 hours. So, over the next 24 to 48 hours, we expect them to start their flight back to Australia,” Butler said.
Medical personnel will be on board the flight, which is expected to land at RAAF Base Pearce in Perth later this week, according to government advice.
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email The travellers will then be transported to quarantine facilities at the Bullsbrook national resilience centre, about where they will isolate for the first three weeks of their 42-day quarantine period.
Flight crew will also quarantine at Bullsbrook.
The World Health Organization has recommended but not mandated a 42-day quarantine for the travellers due to the long incubation period of hantavirus. The virus can cause flu-like symptoms leading to respiratory arrest and death in some cases.
Butler said Australia’s measures were “probably the strongest quarantine response of any country that is taking passengers back from this cruise ship”.
“Most countries are only requiring their returning citizens to go into some sort of centralised quarantine, like a hospital or a centre like the one we’re using in Western Australia, for two or three days, and then they’ll be released to home quarantine – obviously subject to monitoring arrangements,” he said.
“We’ve decided to go with something stronger than that. We have these purpose-built facilities, including, obviously, over in Perth. We have staff from the critical care and trauma response centre that have experience in supporting people in those facilities, and advice towards the end of that three-week period about what should happen for the remainder of the 42 days.” Oceanwide Expeditions confirmed on Monday that all guests and some crew who had been on the ship had been either repatriated to their home countries or to the Netherlands. Twenty-five crew members remain on board, as does the body of a German guest who died on the ship on 2 May.
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