Evacuated Australians to face further quarantine

MORE than 200 Australians trapped on the coronavirus ship Diamond Princess will be flown home by the Australian government tomorrow – and go straight into another 14 days of quarantine.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the government would send a rescue plane to

Japan to evacuate the Australians who had been locked in their cabins in Yokohama harbour since February 5.

The group will be flown on a special Qantas charter to Darwin, where they will be taken to the Howard Springs quarantine village.

Cairns man Paul Fidrmuc was taken off the Diamond Princess after becoming a confirmed case last week. His wife Jacqui is still in the couple’s cabin waiting for her quarantine period to end.

Christmas Island was ruled out as a quarantine site due to the advanced age of many of the Diamond Princess passengers, meaning they needed to be closer to a hospital.

The decision came as 355 people on the ship – about 10 per cent of those on board – have contracted the virus, including 20 Australians who are being treated in Japanese hospitals.

Qantas will use the same 747 it used to evacuate two planeloads of people from Wuhan two weeks ago.

Those who arrived on the first flight, yesterday finished their two-week quarantine and 242 of them were boarding charter flights on Christmas Island back to their homes.

Mr Morrison said there would be no fee for the Qantas rescue charter and warned anyone on the Diamond Princess who chose not to board the plane would be banned from entering Australia any other way. “At this stage it is not clear how further cases of infection have occurred on board that vessel,’’ he said.

“But because of the nature of the quarantine not being able to be assured, for those more than 200 Australians who will be returning to Australia, we are going to have to require a further 14-day quarantine period to be put in place on their return to Darwin,” Mr Morrison said.