Australia may quarantine arrivals in isolated rural camps

Australia is considering controversial plans to set up isolated rural quarantine camps for people entering from overseas as the country tries to plug the final gap in its efforts to combat Covid-19.

The proposal to relocate quarantine facilities away from hotels in dense city centres was first raised by the state of Queensland, which imposed a three-day lockdown in Brisbane, after a cleaner at a quarantine hotel in the capital was infected with the contagious British strain of the virus.

Following the lockdown, state Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk proposed setting up quarantine accommodation at mining camps in regional centres such as Toowoomba and Gladstone.

But the plan angered some town locals, who said they did not want to be forced to deal with an influx of potentially infectious visitors.

Mr Robbie Katter, an outspoken Queensland state MP, said rural areas often have inferior health services but accept this as the price of living away from big cities. He said any remote camps should be set up only if they were at least 50km to 100km from a major town.

"People will often live in a remote area because they're protected from things like this virus, and they'll put up with not having a doctor or vital public services," he told the NCA NewsWire.

"Those people put up with a lot, living in a remote area, to have that barrier away from the negative influence of the cities."

Other states like Western Australia have also said that remote quarantine facilities should be considered. The federal government was initially sceptical about the plan, saying city hotels were easily locked down and allowed international arrivals to be near medical services and testing facilities.

Following the protests by local communities in Queensland, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he believed it was unfair to "dump" the Covid-19 problem on remote areas, but he had an open mind about remote facilities.

The largest state, New South Wales, has flatly rejected the move, saying it takes in more international arrivals than other states and that remote quarantining was not logistically feasible.

Australia is largely free of Covid-19 but has suffered repeated outbreaks from cases that have leaked out of quarantine facilities. On Wednesday, Australia had 11 new cases, including two locally transmitted ones which are part of a cluster linked to a hotel in Melbourne, Victoria.

Australia has barred all international arrivals except for citizens and residents and their families, as well as travellers from New Zealand. About 38,000 Australians abroad are still waiting to come home and the list is growing.

Many are in parts of the world hit badly by Covid-19.

Meanwhile, the authorities have struggled to simultaneously bring back Australians quickly while preventing breaches from quarantine facilities.

Professor Adrian Esterman, a public health and biostatistics expert from the University of South Australia, said setting up rural facilities would be costly but the expense should be measured against the costs of imposing further lockdowns in capital cities.

"It's very hard to make a quarantine station 100 per cent leak-free," he wrote on The Conversation website last week. "But if we move quarantine facilities out of cities to isolated places, any leaks would be much less likely to cause major transmission events."