If Yolandé and Hugo Barnard were to fly to Australia today from the UK, where more than 80,000 new COVID-19 cases are registered every day, they would be able to go straight home and have a quarantine-free Christmas.
Key points:
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The federal government has lifted restrictions on Australians arriving from southern Africa
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However, the Northern Territory still requires people arriving on repatriation flights to be quarantined for 14 days
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187 people are quarantined in Howard Springs after arriving from Johannesburg last week
But the couple flew to Australia on a return flight last week, so they are currently stuck with their five children in the Howard Springs quarantine facility in Darwin until Christmas Day.
“I do not understand why there is that difference between commercial and repatriation flights,” Mr Barnard said.
More than 180 Australian nationals and permanent residents will spend Christmas in the same way after arriving in the Northern Territory of South Africa on 12 December.
They were caught there after Australia imposed restrictions on arrivals from eight South African countries in response to the Omicron variant.
Not knowing when these restrictions would be lifted, they accepted help from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) to return home.
The federal government has now lifted restrictions on Australians arriving from southern Africa, and yesterday the Northern Territory scrapped all quarantine requirements on international travelers.
Despite the new rules, travelers on the return flight from Johannesburg have been told by NT Health officials that they will not be allowed to leave until their 14-day quarantine ends on 26 December.
“It makes no sense for fully vaccinated and exempt people [such as children] to be quarantined, “Mr Barnard said.
Not suitable for children
Before agreeing to put their family on the repatriation flight, the Barnards family contacted the facility to ask them to be accommodated together.
Instead, the family with five children under nine is accommodated in seven separate units, each with a single bed.
They told ABC that the doors to the former mine camp are so heavy that some of their children cannot open them.
The parents have decided to allow their nine-year-old to sleep alone, while the five-year-old and the two-year-old share a unit, and the seven-year-old and three-year-old also sleep. together.
They say one of the children fell down the stairs in an attempt to cross units, and last week Mrs. Barnard discovered a snake under the stairs on their porch.
They called the staff and asked to have it removed, but were told that a worker would only attend if the snake bit anyone.
Because the children cannot open the doors or can be easily heard through the walls of the unit, Yolandé and Hugo have alternately been up on the porch all night if needed, and they only get between three and four hours of sleep a night.
“It’s not suitable for children,” Mrs. Barnard said.
“Why can I not quarantine at home where my children are not harmed?”
Troubled times
As Australia followed Britain by imposing restrictions on people arriving from southern Africa, Health Minister Greg Hunt said the decision was a “strong, quick, crucial, immediate but preventative” measure to stop the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19.
Public health expert Seye Abimbola from the University of Sydney said the initial travel ban was neither proportionate nor an effective control measure and that it was the right decision to reverse it.
“It should never have been made in the first place,” said Dr. Abimbola.
It is of little consolation to the people who arrived before the restrictions were withdrawn.
People currently incarcerated in Howard Springs have told ABC they were in South Africa for difficult personal reasons, including to support family undergoing chemotherapy, attend funerals for loved ones, care for sick parents or be with the dying relatives.
Throshni Naidoo, who was born in South Africa and has lived in Sydney for 22 years, went to South Africa in November because her father was ill. While she was there, he died.
Her brother died earlier this year of COVID-19, so Mrs Naidoo was worried about leaving her mother without support in South Africa.
But when she was offered a seat on a return flight, she took the opportunity, thinking there might be no other way to get home to her nine-year-old daughter and husband, who remained in Sydney.
That meant she had to miss a traditional Indian ceremony held 16 days after a person’s death.
“I’ve probably had the worst four weeks of my life,” she said.
Now she is also going to miss Christmas with her family.
DFAT told ABC that all passengers on government-facilitated flights arriving in Darwin must undertake 14 days of mandatory supervised quarantine in Howard Springs, in accordance with Northern Territory requirements.
A spokesman for NT Health said people who have not been vaccinated are allowed on return flights and a 14-day quarantine “ensures that the most protective measures are in place for those flights”.
‘These rules are inconsistent’
Ms Naidoo said she was grateful that the DFAT was helping her get back to Australia, but it hurt her to see how the government’s border ban had affected southern Africa just as trade and tourism resumed.
“It has hurt so many hundreds of thousands of people’s lives,” she said.
The restrictions angered the region’s business leaders and politicians, who claimed that South Africa was effectively punished for being transparent in detecting Omicron.
Dr. Abimbola said he was afraid other countries would see how South Africa had been treated and wait to unveil new varieties in the future.
Epidemiologist Catherine Bennett of Deakin University, however, disagreed.
She said the border restrictions were a “sensible, balanced and measured approach”, given the uncertainty surrounding Omicron.
“It still made sense to pause the limit to slow the spread, but it was only expected to last a few weeks so we could understand more about this new variant,” Professor Bennett said.
Now that that has happened, she believes it is right to scrap restrictions for those countries.
Professor Bennett believes that good public health measures, including getting travelers to test negative for the virus before boarding a flight to Australia, and follow-up tests on arrival and 72 hours after landing, are now sufficient.
Northern Territory Public Health Laws allow its Chief Health Officer to provide directions deemed “necessary, appropriate, or desirable” to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Sir. Barnard says, however, that it does not make sense to have different rules for people arriving on return and commercial flights.
“These rules are inconsistent,” he said.
“They can not be considered necessary, appropriate or desirable.”
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