Some of the Australian travellers on board the MV Hondius, the ship at the centre of the hantavirus outbreak, will return to New South Wales this week and enter Australia’s first purpose-built biocontainment facility.
The federal government is still finalising health measures and quarantine arrangements for the group of five people – four citizens and one permanent resident – about to disembark in the Canary Islands.
They are due to travel back to Australia on a charter flight to Perth alongside medical personnel in full PPE protective gear, who will monitor them and provide assistance if needed.
The ship, carrying 146 people, arrived at Tenerife, the largest of Spain’s Canary Islands, on Sunday morning after three people died of the virus and eight others became ill. Passengers and crew were confined to their cabins to help stop the spread of the virus.
An Australian government spokesperson said one New Zealand citizen will also travel on the plane. When the charter flight leaves Tenerife, safety measures will be implemented in line with guidance from the Australian Centre for Disease Control.
The flight was expected to leave Tenerife at 5pm, local time, on Monday, the last to leave the Canary Islands.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Dfat), which has consular officers on the ground in the Canary Islands to coordinate response efforts, held a call with passengers aboard the MV Hondius last night to discuss health precautions in the coming days.
The Australians and permanent resident being repatriated live in New South Wales and Queensland. The federal government said it was finalising quarantine arrangements with state health officials, and it will be the responsibility of the states to administer them.
NSW Health said on Monday it was working with the federal government and other states to receive, transport and provide care to passengers.
A spokesperson said that, on arrival, the passengers will immediately be transported by ambulance to the NSW biocontainment centre at Westmead hospital in Sydney, where they will undergo clinical assessment. Health officials will then assess “suitable quarantine arrangements”.
“These passengers will be closely monitored and, should any develop symptoms, they will be assessed by an infectious diseases physician and be provided appropriate care,” a NSW health spokesperson said.
“The risk to the public is low. Hantavirus is only rarely transmitted from person to person, and transmission requires close contact. People with hantavirus infection are not infectious before their symptoms begin. The time from exposure to hantavirus to the onset of symptoms (incubation period) can be up to six weeks.”
They did not say how long it was anticipated the passengers would have to stay at the centre.
The centre at Westmead came online in 2023, the first purpose-built biocontainment facility in the country. At the time, NSW Health described it as a “highly specialised … purpose-built” facility that can care for both adults and pediatric patients with “high consequence infectious diseases” such as Ebola or MERS. The facility has a dedicated elevator directly from a helipad or ambulance bay, its own sewage treatment plant and has been designed so clinicians use strict processes to put on or remove PPE.
Those protocols take about half an hour and involve more than 40 steps.
The federal government stressed that safety was the priority during the repatriation but added the risk to the broader populace remains low.
“The Australian government’s number one priority is the safety of passengers and the Australian community,” a government spokesperson said. “The Australian government is working closely with state authorities to coordinate arrival, health and transport arrangements. Quarantine and health arrangements are managed by states in accordance with their public health requirements.”
The evacuated passengers will be prevented from coming into contact with the general public on landing in Perth and will be moved directly from the charter flight to transportation that will take them directly to their quarantine locations.
Full details of those travellers’ quarantine requirements will be solidified in the next 24 hours and they could resemble something akin to those set out during the Covid pandemic.
Other countries are taking similar precautions for repatriated passengers from the cruise.
In France, passengers from the ship will be quarantined in hospital for 72 hours for a full assessment before they are sent home for 45 days in isolation with monitoring in place. That monitoring will include regular follow-up for six weeks, which corresponds to the maximum potential incubation for a hantavirus infection. In the UK, passengers will be taken to an isolation facility for similar assessments over 72 hours. Officials will then determine if they can isolate at home, or at another suitable location based on their living arrangements.
The Guardian has contacted the Australian CDC for comment, NSW Health and Queensland Health for details about the country’s own plans once the travellers arrive.
Murray Watt, the federal environment minister, told ABC News on Monday the event had obviously become a “terrible situation” for the Australian travellers, adding that proper quarantine arrangements would be in place.
“We want to make sure Australians receive the care that they need in this situation,” Watt told. “This is not a situation that people have walked into deliberately. And I think all Australians would want to see each other looked after in this sort of situation.”
Hantavirus, a group of viruses that are carried by rodents, can cause serious infection in humans, who are usually infected through contact with infected rodent urine, droppings or saliva. The World Health Organization (WHO) notes that infection can cause a range of illnesses from severe disease to death.
But transmission between humans is rare and only seen in settings with close, prolonged contact. The WHO noted recently that the threat to the global population remained low, and the Australian Centre for Disease Control said the risk of a widespread outbreak such as Covid-19 or influenza remained very low.
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