With all the congratulations that have been going around following Melbourne achieving zero COVID-19 cases there is one group that has been entirely overlooked. They have done it tough, perhaps tougher even than elderly in nursing homes. They have been kept in hotels under the watch of security guards, the same scenario that led to Melbourne’s second outbreak of COVID-19 and to our prolonged lockdown. Yet not one of these people came down with COVID.
These particular people remain in a prolonged form of hotel quarantine, unable to mix with the general public. They are refugees and asylum seekers brought to Australia under the now defunct Medevac legislation from Nauru and Manus Island. Around 200 of them are held — in some cases for nearly two years at the Mantra hotel in Preston, and the Kangaroo Point hotel in Brisbane.