Six passengers from Australia and New Zealand will be quarantined at a facility in Perth after they were stranded on a cruise ship exposed to the deadly hantavirus.
The passengers are being repatriated to Australia and expected to land at the Royal Australian Air Force base at Pearce, located next door to the facility.
The travellers will be taken straight to the Bullsbrook Centre for National Resilience once they disembark the plane and will be ordered to stay there for at least three weeks.
The charter flight from Tenerife, where the MV Hondius is docked, is expected to depart about 3.20am AEST on Tuesday.
The passengers will transit through the Netherlands and continue their journey to Australia within 48 hours under strict conditions
Medical staff will be on the flights to monitor and assist the passengers.
The passengers are expected to arrive at Pearce later this week.
The passengers and flight crew will be transported to the Bullsbrook centre for isolation.
Bullsbrook National Centre for Resilience
Construction of the 500-bed facility finished in October 2022 as part of the nation’s Covid-19 response, but has never been fully used.
It was purpose-built for long-term residence and included onsite medical facilities, ventilation systems to prevent cross-contamination and separate staff areas in response to the Covid pandemic.
The Western Australian government operated the $400m centre until 2023, and it has previously been flagged as a potential site for crisis accommodation or a prison facility to house inmates.
Federal Minister for Health Mark Butler said an order would be made over the next 24 hours for the Australians and New Zealander to be quarantined at the Commonwealth owned centre, which will be operated by WA Health during the quarantine period.
“As we move into that three week period, we’ll be seeking further advice from the chief health officers through the Australian Health Protection Committee about what arrangement should take place beyond that,” he said.
“I want to stress that our primary responsibility as a government, obviously, is to keep our community safe and healthy.
“We also have a responsibility to those passengers, to bring them home and to protect them from any risk, no matter how small, of potentially transmitting the virus without knowing it.
“That is why we’ve decided to take this precautionary approach to activate the Center for National Resilience, which was set up precisely for this purpose, to keep our community safe and we’ll be monitoring those arrangements over the coming couple of days.”
A WA Health spokesman said they would provide support in response to the repatriation of the Hondius passengers.
“The Australian government has confirmed that none of the passengers being repatriated to Australia are displaying symptoms of the virus,” a spokesman said.
“In order to support the safe return of these travellers, they will be escorted by appropriate personnel wearing personal protective equipment.”
WA’s chief health officer Clare Huppatz reassured the community that the rare illness presented no risk to them, given the quarantine provisions.
“WA Health will continue to monitor the situation and provide appropriate support and public health advice,” Dr Huppatz said.
“This is a very rare disease, with human-to-human transmission rarer still.”