The docking of the luxury cruise ship Ruby Princess and its 1148 crew and 2647 passengers at Sydney’s Circular Quay last Friday may constitute the single biggest contributor to Australia’s coronavirus crisis.
Here’s what happened in the lead-up to a debacle that should never have happened.
March 6: Federal government publishes the National Protocol for Managing Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Risk From Cruise Ships, which states “provided there are no concerns about the COVID-19 risk, profile of a ship or suspected COVID-19 cases reported” a ship may be allowed to continue its voyage.
March 8: Ruby Princess leaves Sydney on a 13-day New Zealand tour. Reports now indicate the ship may well have carried infected passengers prior to leaving.
March 12: Ruby Princess owner, Princess Cruises, announces “voluntary and temporary pause” of operations for 60 days.
March 14: NZ government announces temporary ban on cruise ships from overseas.
March 14: Five people on board the Ruby Princess with influenza-like illness are tested in Wellington, New Zealand and all are negative for COVID-19 at this time. Ruby Princess is redirected to Australia.
March 19: Ruby Princess docks in Sydney.
March 20: NSW Health announces it has identified four people who have tested positive to COVID-19. One, a resident of Tasmania, is still in NSW being assessed at a Sydney hospital. One is taken directly from the ship to hospital. One presents to a Sydney hospital after disembarkation for testing. The fourth confirmed case is a crew member who is in isolation on board the ship. Ninety-eight of the 1148 crew left the ship and departed NSW for their home countries.
March 22: NSW Health announces it will “go even further beyond the national protocol and its current own state protocols, and will hold all cruise ships in port until any patients highlighted as having respiratory issues are tested for COVID-19. At the same time, NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard says his staff made a mistake by letting passengers disembark.
Today, the spread of COVID-19 from the Ruby Princess has blown out to 48 confirmed cases. According to the NSW Health department, quoting data collected Sunday night, 17 passengers and one crew member have been diagnosed in NSW and eight passengers have been diagnosed interstate. Sixty-three percent of the passengers on board were Australian residents, 20% were residents of the United States, and the rest are from a variety of other countries.
The NSW Health Department has attempted to shift blame to the federal government, claiming that it followed the federal government’s national protocol.
“Contrary to some public statements made, every cruise liner that has entered NSW ports has been the subject of an assessment well beyond federal requirements,” NSW Health said.
According to the protocol, “provided there are no concerns about the COVID-19 risk profile of a ship or suspected COVID-19 cases reported” a ship may be allowed to continue the voyage while samples are being tested.
Why were the inbound passengers not processed by Border Force? The ship was in international waters so customs and immigration procedures and bio-security are mandatory when entering or departing Australia.
In an unexplained reversal of policy, Dutton put the Chinese-Australians who arrived by plane into Christmas Island, while the Caucasian visitors who arrived by boat were allowed into the community.
Please explain.
I was in Sydney when this happened. Thousands and thousands of passengers were permitted to disembark when the company knew they were carrying infected passengers. No masks, no hand gel, no plans for how these passengers were to get home to all over Australia. They were desperate for food, hotels, transport home. I imagine some Carnival accountant did the sums for keeping all those thousands of passengers in quarantine for two weeks and worked out how it would affect their $20 million…billion? bottom line and decided to just dump them here in Australia. Not in America mind you where this company is based. No. And no mention of the other four ships who dumped passengers in Sydney.
Susan Weber Tasmania
Tasmania
It would appear that governments’ laxity re cruise ships for quite some time serves to undermine our best efforts to avoid contagion. It smacks of hypocrisy to be urged to sanitise and keep social distance whilst releasing dozens of infected people into our community.
And as for the lack of testing! Singapore and other Asian countries rigorously tested, tracked and isolated. By not dealing with known clusters and imposing overly-strict criteria on testing candidature, we’ve also helped spread the virus.
And finally, why not take the public into the confidence tent and tell us where these clusters are and map where areas of infection are so we can avoid them?
You didn’t mention that two people from the Ruby Princess disembarked in Sydney, flew Jetstar to Darwin and then tested positive for the virus…..took the NT toll to 5, which may not sound much, but who knows how many more people were infected on the flight….it’s important to get your facts right