{"id":753853,"date":"2026-06-22T23:31:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T23:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/753853\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T23:31:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T23:31:22","slug":"freedom-day-for-hantavirus-cruise-travellers-as-bullsbrook-quarantine-comes-to-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/753853\/","title":{"rendered":"Freedom Day for Hantavirus cruise travellers as Bullsbrook quarantine comes to end"},"content":{"rendered":"

Six quarantined travellers from an ill-fated cruise struck by a hantavirus outbreak are finally making their way home this morning, after spending the past several weeks in a special facility in Bullsbrook.<\/p>\n

The group arrived at Perth Airport Tuesday morning about 4.30am just hours after their 42-day mandatory quarantine period came to a formal end.<\/p>\n

\"PassengersCamera IconPassengers and a crew exposed to hantavirus on the Antarctic cruise ship MV Hondius pictured at Perth Airport T3 this morning. Credit: Michael Wilson\/The West Australian<\/p>\n

It marked their first interaction with the \u2018outside world\u2019 and a return to normal living.<\/p>\n

Despite the shake-up to their original travel plans and unscheduled West Australian stopover, the tourists spoke highly of their time in Perth.<\/p>\n

\"PassengersCamera IconPassengers and a crew exposed to hantavirus on the Antarctic cruise ship MV Hondius have completed their 42-day isolation. Credit: Michael Wilson\/The West Australian<\/p>\n

The experience was described as \u201cpretty good actually\u201d by one of the men, who said they were tested \u201call the time\u201d but got out for \u201cplenty of walks\u201d.<\/p>\n

Dining at the Bullsbrook facility was also a highlight.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had good food, quite a variety, some good pizzas,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"PassengersCamera IconPassengers and a crew exposed to hantavirus on the Antarctic cruise ship MV Hondius at Perth Airport on Tuesday morning. Credit: Michael Wilson\/The West Australian<\/p>\n

Peter Marsh, one of the quarantined travellers who previously spoke to media, said the facility had proved an \u201cabsolutely perfect\u201d place to quarantine.<\/p>\n

\u201c(We were) very, very well looked after by the staff,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been incredibly grateful for the Commonwealth government and the staff who looked after us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The four Australians, one permanent resident and one person from New Zealand were escorted through check-in at the Qantas terminal in a process that took no longer than 10 minutes.<\/p>\n

The group was briefly addressed by airport staff at a desk before being walked towards a security check point.<\/p>\n

\"PassengersCamera IconPassengers were in high spirits ahead of their final journey home. Credit: Michael Wilson\/The West Australian<\/p>\n

The cohort were repatriated to Perth on May 15 after an outbreak of hantavirus on board MV Hondius, a cruise ship bound for Antarctica. The virus ultimately killed three people.<\/p>\n

The Australian contingent were among the last to leave the ship and first had to quarantine in the Netherlands, where they stayed in a hotel for several days while the Federal Government worked to secure a plane, a crew willing to travel with them, and a country to agree to a fuel stop on their return to Australia.<\/p>\n

The flight eventually took off from Eindhoven Airport on May 14 and made a refuelling stop at Al Minhad Airbase in the United Arab Emirates before touching down in WA about 11.30am AWST on May 15.<\/p>\n

Six weeks later they are now finally on the way back to homes, including in New South Wales and Queensland.<\/p>\n

\"TheCamera IconThe group leave Bullsbrook. Credit: 7NEWS\/7NEWS<\/p>\n

They were the first people to use the Federal Government\u2019s 500-bed Centre for Resilience for what it was built for following the COVID outbreak earlier this decade.<\/p>\n

At the centre, each traveller was subject to daily symptom checks and limited to two one-hour walking slots each day.<\/p>\n

It comes after 20 British passengers were released on Monday, as well as 18 America passengers who had been held for weeks at a federal facility in Nebraska.<\/p>\n

They had been among 147 people from 23 nations on board the MV Hondius which was hit with a rare case of the Andes strain in Johannesburg on May 2.<\/p>\n

\"TheCamera IconThe group arrived at Perth Airport around 4.30am. Credit: Michael Wilson\/The West Australian<\/p>\n

Beyond MV Hondius passengers there has been no further community spread of the hantavirus outbreak.<\/p>\n

The disease can be transmitted between people who have close contact with each other and can be deadly, with a 40 per cent case fatality rate for the Andes virus, 40 times that of COVID-19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six quarantined travellers from an ill-fated cruise struck by a hantavirus outbreak are finally making their way home…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":753854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[64,63,137,44,45],"class_list":["post-753853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-health","tag-news","tag-wa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=753853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/753854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}