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Five Australians will be held in a purpose-built quarantine facility outside of Perth for three weeks, after potentially coming into contact with a deadly hantavirus aboard a cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
Health Minister Mark Butler on Monday said that three people from New South Wales and two from Queensland would be flown from Tenerife to the RAAF Pearce base north of Perth. They will then be transferred to the nearby Bullsbrook Centre for National Resilience quarantine facility.
Butler said the cohort would be held for an initial three-week period, with a possible extension. The incubation period for the disease is six weeks.
“We’ve taken a precautionary approach here and put in place, at least initially, a three-week quarantine order. Obviously, we will be monitoring advice about what should happen beyond those three weeks,” Butler said.
The minister said the Albanese government was going harder than other countries that had put in place quarantine periods as short as two or three days in hospitals and private homes.
“These passengers will have to come home on quite a long flight from Tenerife, unlike travelling just to the UK, for example. Probably in a relatively small plane with a higher risk of transmission during transit than would be the case travelling from Tenerife,” Butler said.
Hantaviruses are a family of viruses primarily spread through exposure to rodents or their faeces, and are not usually spread from person to person.
Eight people aboard the MV Hondius have been infected with the disease, with six infections appearing to have been transmitted from two original patients.
The World Health Organisation last week confirmed three people on board had died of the disease.
Professor Ben Marais, the director of the Sydney Institute for Infectious Diseases, said the Andes strain detected on the MV Hondius “has in the past shown to be more infectious” than other hantaviruses.
However, he said the infection risk remains low, and that hantavirus is at this point in time is “not nearly comparable to the COVID outbreak”.
Marais said if we continue to “do the basics well, this should not spread any further. But it’s a warning that these things are with us”.
The president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, initially attempted to prevent the ship from docking amid fears that passengers would remain on the island. He named Australia and the Netherlands as two nations that were not moving fast enough to repatriate their citizens. The Spanish government overturned his decision on Saturday night.
The Bullsbrook facility – a purpose built quarantining facility completed in 2022 at a cost of $400 million – has sat idle since its completion. It was mooted as a potential prison by the West Australian government last month.
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