‘Difficult’ mission to repatriate Australian hantavirus cruise passengers en route to long Perth quarantine | Hantavirus

Australians and New Zealanders aboard the deadly hantavirus-hit cruise ship will spend the first three weeks of their quarantine at the Bullsbrook national resilience center just outside Perth.

Australian Health Minister Mark Butler said that the flight crew that will bring them back to the country should also join them.

He confirmed that a last-minute change in plan meant that the six people traveling on the MV Hondius would remain in the Netherlands for up to two days rather than returning directly from Tenerife.

Butler said they landed in the Netherlands on Tuesday morning, Australian time, as the first leg of a complex operation to repatriate them. There they were met from a safe distance by Australian ambassador Greg Fench.

They were taken to a quarantine hotel before being flown to Australia on a charter flight later this week.

“This is a difficult regulation to make,” Butler told ABC News Tuesday morning.

“You’ve got to have crew willing to isolate at the end of the flight, you’ve got to have a flight between the Netherlands and Australia with some refueling arrangements in place… And it’s important that we have those quarantine arrangements in place ready to go when they land in Australia.”

The government still expected four Australians, one permanent resident and one New Zealand citizen, to return to Australia by the end of the week. It became clear late Monday night that none of them showed any symptoms of the virus.

“They can only stay in the Netherlands for a maximum of 48 hours. So we expect them to start flights back to Australia within the next 24 to 48 hours,” Butler said.

According to government advice, medical personnel will also be on board the aircraft, which is expected to land at RAAF Base Pearce in Perth.

Passengers will then be transported to quarantine facilities at the Bullsbrook national resilience centre, where they will isolate for the first three weeks of a 42-day quarantine period.

The flight crew will also be quarantined at Bullsbrook.

None of the passengers showed symptoms of hantavirus and no other Australian citizens or permanent residents are known to be on board.

Due to the long incubation period of hantavirus, the World Health Organization recommended a 42-day quarantine for travelers, but did not mandate it. The virus can cause flu-like symptoms, leading to respiratory arrest and death in some cases.

Butler said Australia’s measures were “probably the strongest quarantine response of any country taking passengers off a cruise ship”.

“Most countries only require their returning nationals to go into some form of central quarantine, such as a hospital or a center similar to what we use in Western Australia, for two or three days, and then they will be subject to home quarantine – subject to monitoring arrangements, of course,” he said.

“We decided to go with something stronger than that. We have purpose-built facilities, including Perth. We have staff in the critical care and trauma response center who have experience of supporting people in those facilities and towards the end of the three-week period they will be advising on what should happen for the remainder of the 42 days.”

Oceanwide Expeditions confirmed on Monday that all guests and some crew on board were sent back either to their home countries or to the Netherlands. In addition to the 25 crew members on board, there is also the body of a German guest who died on board on May 2.