Now is the time to trial home quarantine for returned travellers
Long-distance relationships are always tricky, but COVID has really upped the ante. My partner is French, I am Australian. I am one of those crazy people trying to keep a relationship alive in a world of closed borders.
Nine months ago, I touched down in Darwin for two weeks’ quarantine at Howard Springs. At the time, with coronavirus running wild in Europe and no vaccine available, it seemed like a miracle to return to a COVID-free Australia on a well-organised repatriation flight overseen by a cheerful team of federal officials.
Returned Australian travellers at the Howard Springs quarantine facility in December 2020.Credit:Louise Radcliffe-Smith
Despite the fact the federal government was responsible for stranding me in the first place, I felt grateful in a Stockholm syndrome kind of way to be “rescued†after my return flight was cancelled.
And quarantine at Howard Springs was really not difficult to endure. Basic but clean rooms with a veranda to sit on, windows that opened, good food, warm weather. It was like a weird, expensive holiday where you couldn’t leave even if you wanted to. And it was a price I was prepared to pay for love.
Fast-forward nine months and I’ve just finished quarantine for a second time after returning from France, this time in locked-down Melbourne. My room at the Mantra Epping was fine in that efficient prefab way modern hotels are, all dark glass and fake wood.
The bathroom wasn’t mouldy yet, there was a TV and a comfortable bed. The food was unpredictable (sometimes inedible, sometimes OK), and the windows looked out on a carpark. I got a daily call from the medical team, but the only person I actually set eyes on was the man who politely stuck Q-tips up my nose.
A returned passenger in hotel quarantine.Credit:Jason South
Howard Springs was better but, really, quarantine is quarantine. The trappings may have been different but the facts were the same: I was confined to a small space for two weeks and I couldn’t leave.
There were two areas, however, where my quarantine experiences differed markedly. The first was what happened when I landed in Australia.
In Darwin, a crack team of around 15 Australian Medical Assistance Teams (AUSMAT) and federal officials managed to de-board, check in, COVID-test and transport 150-odd passengers to Howard Springs in less than 90 minutes.
In Melbourne, walking through the airport with my 14 fellow passengers and 10 or so airline crew, I counted at least 50 staff sitting at four different stations and lining the corridors in case we had the ability to teleport through walls. At every station they checked exactly the same details and gave us a piece of information.
They didn’t COVID-test us and it still took two and a half hours to reach the hotel, where we were greeted by another 10 or so people. If a passenger had in fact been sick, the virus would have had 60 potential hosts to choose from.
The other major difference between my two quarantine experiences, of course, was what was happening on the outside. The first time I was returning to the land of the COVID-free and it seemed completely fair that I do my bit to keep it out of the community. The second time, I came back to a state where the virus was well and truly out of the bag.
Yesterday, according to state government figures, only two of the 5675 people in Victoria with coronavirus contracted it overseas. I am double-vaccinated and have had six negative PCR tests in the past three weeks. I’m more likely to catch the virus in the supermarket now I’m home than I was to give it to anyone in quarantine.
Nine months is a long time in a pandemic, and there is no logic to hotel quarantine now. Two months ago, even two weeks ago, it made sense. Sitting in my room last week staring out at a virus-riddled city, the entire quarantine machine seemed like a massive waste of time, manpower and resources.
The Howard Springs quarantine facility.Credit:Louise Radcliffe-Smith
The money the government extracts from 500 overseas arrivals a week is not going to cover the cost of staff, hotels, buses and food. I doubt it even comes close. Quarantine workers would be much better employed fighting the threat of COVID in the community, which is where it overwhelmingly is, not in the hotels.
And here’s a thought: some of the workers could be redeployed to manage a home quarantine system where people wear locator bracelets and stay home just like everyone else.
Hotel quarantine only has a purpose if it stops infections getting into a clean population. That is no longer the case. The genie is out of the bottle in Victoria and it’s not going to gallantly jump back in.
We’re in a race to get the population vaccinated before the hospitals fill up and everyone goes stark raving mad from staring at the same four walls. From where I sit, if ever there was a time to start trialling home quarantine, it’s now.
Louise Radcliffe-Smith is a producer at The Age.
0 Response to "Now is the time to trial home quarantine for returned travellers"
Post a Comment