A flight carrying more than 200 Australian evacuees from Wuhan landed in Darwin after being granted delayed clearance to fly from Chinese authorities, who locked down the city in response to the coronavirus outbreak.
The travellers disembarked through the RAAF base rather than the main airport terminal and were to be transported by bus to the disused Manigurr-Ma/Howard Springs work camp 30km from Darwin to be monitored for the virus.
The Qantas flight was scheduled to leave the city in China’s central Hubei on Friday but take-off was delayed until late on Saturday.
Evacuees were initially expected to be quarantined for 14 days on Christmas Island, before a decision was made on Friday to take them to Darwin.
Foreign minister Marise Payne confirmed the flight had left Wuhan on Sunday morning.
The second flight to assist the departure of Australians has left Wuhan. My thanks to Qantas and all Australian officials involved. We appreciate the cooperative approach of the Chinese Government.
— Marise Payne (@MarisePayne) February 8, 2020
“My thanks to Qantas and all Australian officials involved,” Payne said on twitter. “We appreciate the cooperative approach of the Chinese Government.”
It comes as the number of confirmed deaths from the coronavirus outbreak reached 813, overtaking the global death toll from the 2002-2003 Sars epidemic.
A further 81 people have died since Friday, the Hubei province health commission said. About 780 of those who have died were from Hubei province and only two — a Chinese man who died in the Philippines and a 39-year-old in Hong Kong — have died outside mainland China.
More than 37,100 people are confirmed to have been infected worldwide, including 15 in Australia.
Australia’s chief medical officer, professor Brendan Murphy, said the 266 people, including 92 children, on that flight have been screened for the virus four times – once in China, twice on the flight, and once again at arrival – and would be screened again once they settled in to the work camp.
“They are all clinically well and are in the process of being transported to the Howard Springs quarantine facility where they will have another health check,” Murphy told reporters in Melbourne.
Murphy thanked the Northern Territory government, the ADF, and locals for their help in setting up the facility, which he said was needed because “Christmas Island is full at the moment from a quarantine perspective.”
“I want to again reassure the community around the Howard Springs facility in Darwin that I have personally inspected it and I am absolutely confident that all precautions have been taken to ensure that there is no risk to the community,” he said.
“We know that these people who have been quarantined there are actually well at the moment and there is a very large barrier between where they will be and the rest of the community. Anyone who develops the virus will be immediately transported to Darwin Hospital and properly quarantined.”
He said there were no current plans for any more evacuation flights.
Murphy said all 15 who had been diagnosed with the virus in Australia were in a stable condition, and some were now considered cleared. He said he has no further information on the seven Australians who contracted the virus on a cruise ship near Japan, except that they had been taken to Japanese hospitals.
Prime minister Scott Morrison confirmed on Friday that the mining camp had been set up as a second quarantine site, and said the government was working with local communities on the “implications of those arrangements”.
The flight was reportedly over-subscribed. It’s unlikely Australia will be able to organise a third charter flight with China tightening travel restrictions.
It was the second evacuation flight, after a Qantas flight on Monday ferried 243 Australian citizens and permanent residents to Christmas Island. A further 36 Australians were taken to Christmas Island after catching an evacuation flight from Wuhan to New Zealand.
Education minister Dan Tehan said Richmond air base in NSW was initially considered as a quarantine point for Australians evacuated from China.
But he says it was turned down because it it is a working air base and Christmas Island was chosen instead.
“We had to take a number of considerations into account, but the fact that it is a working air base was one of those factors,” Tehan told Sky News on Sunday. “The government ... I think made the right choice in going to Christmas Island. Now we are looking at other facilities.”
