Covid 19 coronavirus: Push to send virus-stricken Aussies to the desert

A proposed solution for the outbreak is to send all the Covid-19 cases to a former detention centre in the South Australia desert. Photo / Getty

Australia's hotel quarantine system is under the microscope again after the source of an outbreak in South Australia was found to come from the highly-infectious hotels.

There are growing calls to overhaul the system or put workers in a "bubble" inside the hotel to stop potential outbreaks.

And now, a powerful opinion piece in the Adelaide Advertiser has proposed a shock solution.

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Reporter Paul Starick suggested reopening the former Woomera immigration detention centre, in South Australia's far north, as a way of stopping coronavirus leaking into big cities.

"Putting a quarantine facility in a well-serviced yet isolated town with a military airstrip would lessen the risk of a major virus flare-up in a large population centre," he wrote.

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"A quarantine facility could be scaled up to ensure staff remained in the town bubble, rather than risk spreading the virus throughout capital cities. Just as mining workers do, they could fly in and fly out with appropriate medical checks."

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A similar system is already in place in the Northern Territory, where health officials repurposed defence base Howard Springs as a quarantine facility.

A national review of hotel quarantine, reported in October, recommended a national quarantine facility for emergency situations, evacuations or "urgent scalability".