Moving one patient onshore for treatment is easy. Moving dozens of intubated patients all at once because a particularly nasty strain of the virus has swept through not so much, especially given WA is the only feasible destination and has seemingly minimal ability to treat or manage cases.
Also Christmas Island is a long way away. Like a really long way, further from Perth than Auckland is from Sydney. Itâs just not feasible logistically to be ferrying people and resources back and forth over such a large distance.
Logistically it would be too challenging, not only because of its isolation / limited medical facilities but the feds would have to charter a signficant number of aircraft (which all must fly via Perth due to no ability to refuel at Christmas Island) to effectively move people off and on the island on a daily basis.
The facilities barely hold 2000 people (really closer to 1000 when you consider its likely that people paying for quarantine would be better treated than asylum seekers) so no doubt theyâve decided its not worth the tens of millions that would be needed to keep it operating.
Yep it sure was. And I do get why it was rejected initially but with frequent breaches in hotel quarantine are better placed to trust returning citizens will do the right thing and stay home rather than having hundreds of workers come and go from a facility where they risk infection?!
I would suggest the reason the government hasnât gone all out with this is that they would be at high risk of having the existing commercial airlines dropping services if such requirements are made mandatory. They donât want to be put in a position where they have to pay Qantas to carry out repatriation flights if the likes of Emirates / Qatar / SQ cancel passenger services leaving the country with near zero international flights.
Iâd be more worried about it leaking in via the US. Considerable flights inbound directly from the States to all east coast airports daily and it appears thatâs where much of the leakage is coming from, namely American based flight crew. Much of the UK/Euro flights are crews based in Dubai/Qatar/Singapore, not living in these virus ridden places like as US/UK. Iâm not sure if BA are still flying in via Singapore
But this requirement is something the rest of the world have. A friend just traveled to South America and had to provide a negative test before boarding.
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