Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has blasted Queensland’s premier after she claimed a lack of communication from the federal government could hamper local efforts to contain the new coronavirus outbreak.
Mr Hunt and Annastacia Palaszczuk went head to head after more than 1500 more coronavirus cases and 96 deaths were confirmed just hours after the World Health Organisation’s declaration of a global public health emergency.
- Related story: World Health Authority declaration
Since the outbreak, the coronavirus has killed 213 in China, and spread to more than 9300 people globally, with 98 confirmed cases of infection outside the mainland.
A “frustrated” Ms Palaszczuk accused the Morrison government of withholding vital information about a Chinese tour group who had arrived in Queensland on Monday.
They had only recently come back from Wuhan, the Chinese city at the centre of the outbreak and travelled on Tiger Air flight TT566 from Melbourne to the Gold Coast.
“Only the federal government has the details on their incoming boarding card of who they are, where they are staying and their mobile phone contact numbers,” Ms Palaszczuk told Sunrise on Friday morning.
Ms Palaszczuk said she has been left completely out of the blue on the whereabouts of those Chinese travellers.
“We need to contact those people,” she urged.
"I'm frustrated, I'm trying my hardest here, but we need a national effort to deal with this issue right now"
Queensland Premier @AnnastaciaMP slams the federal government's handling of the #coronavirus outbreak. pic.twitter.com/0VFeOzG5VN
— Sunrise (@sunriseon7) January 30, 2020
She again reiterated her concerns during a press conference in Brisbane on Friday afternoon.
There, Ms Palaszczuk pleaded for national cooperation on the outbreak, even revealing she had written to Prime Minister Scott Morrison about the need for Canberra to share international flight records that would reveal the locations of those tourists.
- Related story: Airport staff demand halt to flights from China
Australia has nine confirmed cases, two of them in Queensland involving the Chinese nationals who embarked on the TigerAir flight bound for the Gold Coast.
“The prime minister has the data and the information of people incoming from these flights from the Hubei province,” Ms Palaszczuk said.
“We do not have that information.”
“We would have had a number of planes that have come in from mainland China over the last 1 days. Where are all those people?,” Ms Palaszczuk asked.
Mr Hunt tore into the premier at a news conference on Friday, reading out a list of meeting dates reflecting “daily engagement” with Queensland about the outbreak.
He said Queensland was the chair of the Communicable Diseases Network of Australia committee, with state officials present at a string of recent meetings.
And he said the premier’s own department was part of a national crisis committee hook-up 24 hours earlier on Thursday.
“So if that information has not been provided within the Queensland system to the premier, I would respectfully urge the premier to seek that advice from her own system,” he told reporters.
“Everything that is available to us is available to them.”
An online dashboard built by @JHUSystems is tracking the spread of the #coronavirus outbreak. The dashboard is updated regularly with data from @WHO, @CDCgov, and others to illustrate how the virus is spreading in China and beyond. #nCoV2019https://t.co/JOhpQ0zCH8
— Johns Hopkins University (@JohnsHopkins) January 27, 2020
Virus takes 15 minutes to spread
NSW Health issued new advice about the coronavirus’ ability to spread between humans.
Spending just 15 minutes in close proximity with an infected person could infect you with the respiratory tract illness, which was discovered only 24 days ago.
“A close contact is someone who has been face to face for at least 15 minutes, or been in the same closed space for at least 2 hours, with a person that was infectious,” the NSW Health website advised.
Perhaps what’s concerning authorities even more is the fact that Australians could be contagious well before symptoms become apparent.
This means potentially thousands of people could have been exposed to the coronavirus in Australia.
The federal government still doesn’t have China’s permission to evacuate hundreds of Australians from ground zero of the coronavirus crisis and force them into quarantine on Christmas Island.
Mr Morrison is under increasing pressure to bring the Australians home as trapped citizens from several other countries are evacuated from Wuhan.
On Friday morning, 200 French citizens stuck at the coronavirus epicentre boarded a military aircraft bound for southern France where they will be placed into quarantine for two weeks.
The US and Japan have already transported hundreds of their citizens out of Wuhan, with a second US flight organised in coming days and Britain also planing to evacuate around 200 European nationals on Friday.
Fourty-three airlines across Europe, Asia and North America have suspended or halted flights to China until at late as mid March due to reduced demand to visit the country and fear of the virus spreading.
The US state department went so far as to warn American citizens to refrain from travelling to China altogether.
‘Do not travel to China due to novel coronavirus first identified in Wuhan, China,” the Bureau of Consular Affairs advised citizens on Friday (Australian time).
Economic impact
American investors are growing more concerned about the potential economic impact the coronavirus as stock tumbled at the open on Wall Street following a sell-off in markets in Europe and Japan.
Meanwhile, the coronavirus is expected to hit Australian sectors exposed to the Chinese market, including tourism, education and retail, the hardest.
Investment bank UBS on Friday published a report exploring the implications of the virus that estimated a two-month halt on China package tours could cost Australia at least $1 billion in services exports.
Adding to the potential pain, UBS pointed out that February and March were two of the busiest months for Chinese travellers to Australia, making up about one quarter of annual arrivals.
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