There’s a strong case to supplement our current testing arrangements with rapid antigen testing in key risk areas, detecting and isolating COVID-19 infections even earlier in the process.
Questions over hotel quarantine as calls made for national protocols
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Toowoomba’s Wagner family have a reputation for getting things done. It took their company just 19 months to build the town’s Wellcamp airport, which since opening in 2014 has evolved into a busy freight hub for flights to and from Asia.
Now, against the backdrop of rising alarm about vulnerabilities in city-based quarantine hotels, they’ve set their sights on constructing a 1000-bed quarantine facility (with potential to expand further) on land they own nearby.
Wagner Corporation chair John Wagner says the idea is “a classic case of common sense” and is kicking himself he didn’t think of it in March last year. He claims he’s been inundated with emails from stranded Australians abroad begging him to try and get the project underway.
A Gold Coast celebrity doctor who manages COVID-19 plans for Hollywood A-listers, sports stars and musicians is offering his company s services to help fix Australia s much-maligned hotel quarantine scheme. Bill Anseline - a senior clinical lecturer who has also spent more than two decades as a tour medico and security co-ordinator for some of the world s biggest stars - says hotels have been a stopgap measure, risk spreading coronavirus and are severely impacting mental health. He has teamed up with two of Australia s top epidemiologists to call for a radical rethink of the system, including placing overseas arrivals in self-contained cabins and making them wear GPS trackers.