Some authorities are anticipating the need for quarantine facilities in Australia for at least five years. The Howard Springs facility in the Northern Territory is currently taking about 2000 arrivals a week – about 40 per cent of Australia’s total overseas arrivals – and the territory government appears to think it will be in use for a lot longer. The Northern Territory’s Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Logistics is advertising a five-year tender for bus operators to transport people from major ports of entry including Darwin and Alice Springs airports, to its quarantine facilities.
Infrastructure, Planning and Logistics Minister Eva Lawler did not answer questions about whether the pandemic would last another five years, but said the buses could be used for other disasters as well. Epidemiologists say they don’t anticipate Australia needing quarantine facilities for another five years but say it’s possible they could be used for at least another two years. “Five years seems a bit long,” infectious diseases expert Professor Peter Collignon of Australian National University
“We will probably need them for another two to three years but five years? I don’t know.” Prof Collignon said it probably depended on what happened in countries where there was a lot of virus circulating and not many people vaccinated. “That’s likely who we will use supervised quarantine for,” he said. He said those who were vaccinated would likely be able to do home quarantine. This would include travellers from countries with high infection rates, especially if they were not vaccinated, as well as those from countries where there was a new variant of concern (that may be resistant to vaccines) circulating.
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