Ruby Princess Inquiry Slams Health Officials Over Covid-19 Cruise: Australia US Deaths
▻https://www.forbes.com/sites/tamarathiessen/2020/08/14/ruby-princess-inquiry-health-covid-australia-us
Incubator for infection: When the Ruby Princess docked in Sydney, hundreds of passengers and crew onboard had been infected by Covid. Yet they walked straight out into the community, took trains and planes, and traveled domestically and internationally. Now a NSW government inquiry finds fault with health official bungles and poor judgements that led to Australia’s largest single source of Covid infections at the time, and deaths in Australia and the U.S.
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A four-month inquiry has pointed the blame at government health officials for the Ruby Princess coronavirus “plague ship” fiasco, which caused 28 deaths, eight in the U.S.
The New South Wales government inquiry was launched in April to determine why 2,700 passengers, hundreds of them infected with Covid, left the cruise ship in Sydney on March 19, before results of tests on some passengers were known.
In a scathing report released Thursday, it finds state health officials made “inexcusable”, “inexplicable” and “serious mistakes” in the Ruby Princess handling.
Specifically by assessing the ship passengers as “low risk”, that is, “do nothing”, despite all the expert advice at hand. Also with delays in testing, amounting to "a serious failure by NSW Health.”
The probe, led by barrister Bret Walker, heard everyone on the ship should have been tested, then quarantined. Instead, they were let loose in the community, leading to Australia’s biggest single source of the coronavirus outbreak at the time.
“The report linked more than 900 Covid-19 cases and 28 deaths to the ship, including 20 in Australia and eight in the US,” reports 9News. It also found over 16% of the crew contracted the virus, and almost 40% of Australian passengers onboard.
“The passengers, some of whom had displayed respiratory symptoms, scattered widely, spreading the virus,” says Michelle Grattan, a professorial fellow at the University of Canberra.