Federal Health Minister says Hantavirus flight crew may skip quarantine if passengers test negative

Health Minister Mark Butler has revealed the flight crew that helped transfer the six passengers on a Hantavirus-stricken cruise ship to Australia might not have to quarantine.

Passengers touched down in Perth on a repatriation flight on Friday and underwent an initial assessment upon landing at RAAF Pearce before a more detailed health check and PCR test at the Bullsbrook quarantine facility.

However, Mr Butler said the crew who accompanied them from The Netherlands wouldn’t be required to isolate with the group if all tests returned a negative result.

“The protocol and the guidance from the (Centre for Disease Control) CDC and the Health Protection Committee is that if that test returns negative — and given that the crew were in full PPE for the duration of the flight — then they would not be required to be quarantined,” Mr Butler said.

The turnaround to get test results, however, will take 24 hours — as the only facility able to test for the rare disease in Australia is the Melbourne-based Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity.

“They have to be flown to Melbourne, obviously, and then processed in Melbourne by the Doherty Institute. Until that test is returned, the crew will be in isolation at Bullsbrook as well,” Mr Butler said.

The group flew into Perth from The Netherlands, where they were in hotel quarantine for several days while the Government worked to secure a plane, a crew willing to travel with them, and a country to agree to a fuel stop on their return to Australia.

The flight eventually took off from Eindhoven Airport on Thursday afternoon and made a refuelling stop at Al Minhad Airbase in the United Arab Emirates before touching down in WA about 11.30am AWST.

Mr Butler said all had tested negative and were symptom-free prior to boarding the plane in Europe. A doctor had also been on the flight to assist their condition.

The cohort includes four Australian citizens, one permanent resident and one New Zealander.

The travellers were among 147 people on board the MV Hondius when a rare case of the Andes strain of hantavirus was detected in Johannesburg on May 2 after a British passenger was evacuated after falling ill.

It came after a 70-year-old Dutch man fell ill on April 6, just five days after the ship departed from Argentina, and died on board.

All passengers were disembarked in the Canary Islands with advice from the World Health Organisation to isolate for the 42-day incubation period.

Mr Butler said the six which have been repatriated to Australia will remain in the dedicated quarantine facility for three weeks with continuous testing under the Biosecurity Act.

The group were donning yellow PPE and facemasks when they were transferred from RAAF Base Pearce in a minivan the 7km to the nearby $400 million 500-bed Centre for National Resiliance.

Each of the 500 self-contained single units at Bullsbrook includes a bathroom, air conditioning, television, internet access, and a small kitchenette with a microwave and fridge.

Staff from the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre, which has its headquarters in Darwin, had travelled to the Bullsbrook facility earlier this week to be ready to assist with 24/7 care.

Mr Butler said State health officials will only be required to assist the Commonwealth -led operation if a passenger falls ill and requires a hospital admission in Perth.

“There are hospitals in the Perth metropolitan area that have the facilities to deal with a case,” he said.

“I don’t rate that as at all likely, but of course we’ve put in place arrangements with the WA Government to deal with that eventuality if it were to happen. We rate it as a low risk.

“I want to stress though, WA Health staff are not involved in the operation at Bullsbrook.”

There are now 11 confirmed cases of Hantavirus and three deaths have been recorded from the ship.

No ongoing transmission of the virus has been detected anywhere else in the world so far.