IN BRIEF
- Six travellers are expected to return to Australia on Friday before being transferred to a quarantine facility near Perth.
- All six have tested negative for hantavirus, Health Minister Mark Butler said.
Health Minister Mark Butler has revealed new details about Australia's mission to bring home citizens who had been onboard a cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak.
Four Australian citizens, one permanent resident, and a New Zealand national who had been on the Dutch MV Hondius ship are currently in quarantine in the Netherlands.
Butler told reporters on Thursday that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade had secured an aircraft and crew to transport the six travellers back to Australia.
He said the aircraft was due to land in the Netherlands at around 4pm AEST and take off shortly afterwards. The passengers are expected to arrive in Australia on Friday, before being transferred to a quarantine facility north of Perth.
Butler said the government has "secured all of the necessary clearances and approvals to travel [them] from the Netherlands to Perth".
"The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, from time to time, when there are these emergencies that impact Australian citizens overseas, has to be deployed to bring Australians back home," he said.
"That can be natural disasters, that can be conflict, or it can be international health emergencies. That's part of our job as government, to help Australians return home if they're impacted by global emergencies."
According to the health minister, all six passengers are still in good health.
"They have all tested negative for hantavirus and are showing no symptoms as well," Butler said.
"There are very strict conditions about the flight, the landing, and the quarantine arrangements. They have been developed by our Centre for Disease Control.
"Australians can have high confidence that we are doing everything to ensure this repatriation of those six passengers is undertaken completely safely."
The group was the last cohort of passengers to leave the ship after it docked at the Spanish island of Tenerife on the weekend, due to their long-distance repatriation. They were then transported to the Netherlands, where they have been waiting to return to Australia.
The passengers are expected to be taken to the Bullsbrook Centre for National Resilience in northern Perth, one of the country's three pandemic-prevention facilities with over 500 beds.
Health minister defends 'stronger approach' to other countries
Butler said the six will remain under quarantine for three weeks, but will be reviewed during those three weeks to determine what will take place for the remainder of the 42-day potential incubation period, as the World Health Organization (WHO) has advised.
Countries are implementing various measures to repatriate their citizens. For instance, around two dozen people returning to the United Kingdom will stay in a hospital for 72 hours before beginning a 42-day self-isolation period.
"We have decided on a precautionary basis to take a stronger approach to that because our overriding priority is to keep the Australian community safe and to keep us healthy," Butler said.
Butler said the six passengers have been tested for hantavirus and tested negative.
"I can indicate they are all symptom–free, so we are confident they are getting onto the plane without the virus," he said.
Health staff have already been deployed to the Bullsbrook Centre.
"Staff deployed to Bullsbrook are ready to receive those passengers tomorrow. These are expert staff, well-experienced in infectious disease agencies, alongside other emergencies that they serve the country for," Butler said.
"This is one of the strongest quarantine arrangements in response to this hantavirus outbreak you'll find anywhere in the world."
Last week, three people died after the rare virus that usually spreads among rodents was detected on board the MV Hondius cruise ship, sparking a global health scare.
According to the WHO, 11 cases of infection have been reported among people from the ship.
There are no vaccines or targeted treatments for the virus, but health officials maintain that the public risk is minimal and have rejected comparisons to the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I want to stress this is still, on all of the evidence, a virus that is very rarely transmitted from human to human," Butler said
"All the cases that have been reported thus far and all the evidence previously about the virus show it requires close contact between two humans to be transmitted."
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