QUARANTINE QUESTION IS HOTEL HELL
Using hotels for quarantine is ineffective and restricting our hospitality industry … and that’s just one more reason to construct purpose-built quarantine facilities
IF a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? OK, so perhaps it’s not quite as profound … but it does seem like we have a new philosophical question for our age: If COVID goes away and no one needs to isolate, what happens to our quarantine hotels?
Granted, our nation’s greatest minds are more focused on preventing any further pandemic breaches at these facilities right now, but what about when we return to business as usual?
Seventeen years ago, my wedding night was spent at the then-Watermark Hotel in Surfers Paradise, still sporting some solid ocean views back then before the Q1 grew too tall.
But I have more chance of contracting COVID than returning to that venue anytime soon.
Rather than reminding me of a deluxe staycation, it now reeks of disease and distress.
It’s hard to blame these hotels across Australia and New Zealand – which include major luxury brands such as Marriott, Hyatt Regency, Sheraton Grand, Sofitel and Novotel – for taking part.
Border closures have decimated their business, so when governments came knocking it must have been an offer they couldn’t refuse.
But it was a short-term
The truth is that hotels are great for travellers, not for infected patients
decision that could have long- term effects, according to Victoria University of Wellington associate professor Daniel Laufer.
“By taking the money and becoming known as places where people are locked up, at times cross-infected, and fed food ranging from ‘nice’ to ‘atrocious’, they run the risk of destroying brands that took decades to build,” Prof Laufer said.
But really, this hamstringing of our hospitality industry is just one more reason to construct purpose-built quarantine facilities. The primary reasons, of course, being health and humanity.
As soon as COVID reared its corona-shaped cells, it became clear that Australia’s ability to effectively quarantine was vital to public safety.
But just over a year later and we have seen breach after breach, not to mention the consequent deaths caused by COVID as it secured its own early check-out from hotel after hotel.
The truth is that hotels are great for travellers, not for infected patients. And it’s not like we weren’t warned, either.
Airconditioning industry website HVAC&R News stated: “Any adaptation of a hotel to provide quarantine capabilities will be a compromise to some extent … These facilities were built as hotels, not quarantine facilities.”
Even a former consultant with the World Health Organisation said: “I find it strange and indeed alarming that any reports I have so far seen on the quarantine hotels assumes they will be the major buildings used for international arrivals.”
Meanwhile, the Australian Institute of Refrigeration, Air Conditioning and Heating recommended that singlestorey facilities be used to prevent the circulation of contaminated air – advice which has since been supported by both the Australian Medical Association and the Public Health Association of Australia.
But still we wait for any action, while COVID absconds our hotels time and again.
The only facility with a 100 per cent success rate is the former mining camp at Howard Springs in the Northern Territory. Unlike the four and five-star quarantine hotels employed across the country, this venue is single-level, has well-spaced rooms and plenty of fresh air.
Even better, were a breach to occur, it’s not located in the centre of a heavily populated metropolitan area.
Meanwhile, as a result of our sub-par quarantine hotels, we’ve now outlawed certain Australian citizens from their own homeland.
Although a court case is now pending in regards to the Australian government’s decision to make it a crime for Australian citizens to travel home from India until at least May 15, we don’t need a judge to tell us our lack of safe quarantining facilities seems criminally negligent.
Interestingly, the government has now announced that when citizens do eventually return from India, they must quarantine at Howard Springs.
Because it’s literally all we have.
It’s time to get proper, purpose-built facilities on the ground for the health and safety of our citizens … and our hospitality industry, too.
After all, our hotels are going to need all the time they can get to deep clean their rooms — and their reputations.