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Virus help rolls out as Wuhan travellers return home

A $27.25 million Queensland assistance package for industries affected by the novel coronavirus outbreak is being rolled out as 38 people evacuated from Wuhan start to return home.

Feb 18, 2020, updated Feb 18, 2020
Queensland's Chief Health Officer, Jeanette Young, has welcomed home Wuhan evacuees. Source: Queensland Health

Queensland's Chief Health Officer, Jeanette Young, has welcomed home Wuhan evacuees. Source: Queensland Health

The state’s Chief Health Officer, Dr Jeanette Young, has written to those Queensland residents caught up in the Wuhan outbreak and thanked them for their cooperation.

“I would like to start by welcoming you home,” Young wrote.

“I appreciate this has been a very difficult time for you.”

Health Minister Steven Miles told parliament some of the 38 people evacuated from Wuhan returned yesterday and the remainder would be home by tomorrow.

They are returning to a state hit hard by the loss of Chinese tourists, which Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has again likened to a natural disaster deserving of Commonwealth relief funding.

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Palaszczuk said the state’s $27.25 million tourism, fisheries, education and business package was the largest of its kind, but questioned why the Morrison Government had not followed Japan’s lead and provided national funding. She has again written to the Commonwealth on the issue.

“My government is leading the nation in response to this crisis,” Palaszczuk told parliament today.

Miles said 3000 people had been screened at airports as a precaution, with none testing positive to the virus, COVIG-19, while 1425 had self-isolated due being deemed at risk.

The Health Minister thanked frontline hospital staff for their vigilance and hard work responding to the global crisis.

It is understood five members of a Chinese tourist group found to have COVIG-19 will be discharged from Gold Coast University Hospital as early as today. The nine-member group has had an extended quarantine, due to the need to extend their stay with each new diagnosis, since arriving in Queensland on January 27.

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