Doctors have described Western Australia’s hotel quarantine system as “voluntary” after a woman who posted on social media she would leave was later caught by police after fleeing her accommodation.
Jenny Maree D’ubios hadn’t completed mandatory 14-day quarantine after recently arriving from overseas when she absconded on Saturday morning.
WA police found her overnight at Rockingham Hospital, southwest of Perth.
She has been charged with failing to comply with a direction under the Emergency Management Act.
WA Acting Premier Roger Cook said D’ubios, who described her quarantine experience as “traumatic” on social media, had since returned a negative COVID-19 test result.
D’ubios on Facebook said she wanted a “non-toxic safe place to quarantine”, while also making several conspiracy theory claims.
Australian Medical Association WA president Dr Andrew Miller said the hotel quarantine system needed to be more “humane”, with fresh air available in order to prevent people from trying to flee.
He also wants a “transparent and open” explanation of how the state’s quarantine system is working following the incident.
“The quarantine seems to be a bit of a voluntary thing just now and the hospitals are overloaded,” Dr Miller told reporters on Sunday.
“We know there are going to be uncooperative people, we know mistakes are going to be made, but in my job we have to have systems in place that make up for that, otherwise people die.
“Now unfortunately that’s also the case with hotel quarantine … so there’s lots of work to be done because COVID is not taking the Christmas/New Year period off.”
D’ubios was refused bail in Perth Magistrates Court on Sunday, the ABC reported, and was remanded in custody until 4 January.
Mr Cook said the woman, who arrived in Perth from Madrid on 19 December, faced a maximum penalty of $50,000 or 12 months in prison.
While in hotel quarantine she had regular contact with an on-site medical, health and wellbeing team, he said, and was twice taken to Royal Perth Hospital for medical assistance.
Mr Cook said more than 20,000 travellers had been processed in the state’s hotel quarantine system without an incident until this point.
“Western Australia provided this woman with safe haven from a disease which has killed well over one million people worldwide,” he said.
“So the fact she would take advantage from that hospitality and … put herself and many other people at risk is quite unacceptable.”
Mr Cook also said the fact she had been initially assessed as “low-risk” would be reviewed, as well as the state’s current policy of not monitoring the social media accounts of people in hotel quarantine.
WA Health says the state recorded two new overseas-acquired cases – a man in his 40s and a woman in her 20s – in hotel quarantine on Sunday, following on from the six overseas-acquired coronavirus cases in hotel quarantine on Saturday.
Sunday’s two cases have taken number of active infections in the state to 13.
The total number of COVID-19 infections recorded in Western Australia is 855, with 832 people having recovered.
A total of 662 people visited coronavirus clinics in the state on Boxing Day.
