In the latest instalment of Australia royally cooking the coronavirus pandemic, a Jetstar flight full of passengers travelling from Melbourne to Sydney disembarked without being screened by NSW Health officials.
As ABC report, a leaked email from Sydney Airport claims that Jetstar breached the NSW Government coronavirus protocols after it allowed forty-eight passengers from flight JQ520, which landed at 6:53pm, to disembark without undergoing a health check.
“The final JQ flight arrived and staff enabled disembarkation without NSW Health and police in attendance, breaching the arrivals screening protocols,” the email read.
The breach comes after the NSW Government announcing new laws banning anybody from Greater Melbourne to travel to NSW, with the exception of those travelling under “exceptional circumstances”, like receiving urgent medical care or fulfilling legal obligations.
Passengers on the Jetstar flight — who under new laws would be required to self-isolate for two weeks — arrived in Sydney without a health screening.
The screening process requires travellers from Melbourne to undergo temperature checks, and answer a slew of health questions, and confirm their home address in Victoria.
In a statement, NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant revealed there was “an issue” at the airport.
“The airport has now put in protocols to ensure that the health teams are there and able to do the screening, and no-one is allowed to disembark before that happens,” she said.
“All of those individuals are known, obviously you get tickets when you’re on a plane, we are in the process of tracing them up, if anyone is found to have travelled in breach of any orders we’ll refer them to police and take the appropriate action, depending on whether anyone is symptomatic, to ensure the community is protected.”
Following the incident, Jetstar released a statement delving into its disembarkation procedures.
“We assisted by locating passengers in the terminal who had disembarked without being screened and provided the aircraft manifest to the department to assist them in contacting passengers,” a spokesperson for the company shared.
Jetstar has emphasised that Victoria Health performed temperature and ID checks on passengers before they embarked on the flight.
