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MORE THAN 100 Australians and New Zealanders left Uruguay on a chartered flight today after two weeks stranded aboard a virus-infected cruise ship, Montevideo’s Carrasco Airport has said.
Of 217 people aboard the Greg Mortimer liner, 128 had tested positive for new coronavirus and had been blocked from docking.
An agreement between the Uruguayan and Australian governments was made to create a “sanitary corridor” to take the mostly elderly tourists from Montevideo’s port to its international airport where they boarded a flight for Melbourne, bringing to an end weeks of a virus nightmare.
Television images showed jubilant passengers boarding the medically equipped Airbus A350 plane – with one kissing the runway tarmac.
“This is (like) winning a World Cup,” Uruguay’s Foreign Minister Ernesto Talvi tweeted alongside a video of four buses – flanked by a police escort with blaring sirens – taking the roughly 110 passengers to the airport.
“Flags waving in the balconies and residents applauding. This is the BEST of Uruguay,” he added.
Australia’s Foreign Minister Marise Payne tweeted her thanks to her Uruguayan counterpart Talvi “for your sincere assistance in recent times to ensure the (Australian) passengers have been able to head home.”
She added “special thanks to… all health, emergency & other workers involved” and praised the “unique cooperation” between Uruguay and Australia.
The Australian and New Zealand tourists on the flight included people who tested negative and others confirmed ill with the virus.
On the plane, passengers were to be “seated by test results and level of care required by passenger,” said Australian company Aurore Expeditions, owner of the Greg Mortimer.
The tourists were on an expedition to Antarctica, South Georgia and Elephant Island when their adventure was called off on March 20 due to the nearest South American countries – Argentina and Chile – closing their borders and imposing lockdowns.
The ship traveled to Montevideo as it was the nearest port still open.
It had been anchored in the Rio de la Plata, 20km from the coast since 27 March.
Since then, eight people were transferred to Montevideo hospitals with “life-threatening” conditions.
All are in a stable condition and Uruguay’s foreign ministry told AFP three Australians undergoing hospital treatment would be allowed to fly home as they were in sufficiently good health to travel.
Two are a couple who were brought ashore and taken to a hospital on Wednesday suffering from pneumonia, while the third person had been receiving clinical attention since last week.
Of the other people receiving hospital treatment, two Australians are in intensive care and their partners remained on the Greg Mortimer rather than taking the flight.
Two Filipino crew members are due to be discharged and released to quarantine on the ship. The eighth person to have received hospital treatment is a British woman.
At the port, some passengers hung a banner from the boat with the words: “Thank you Uruguay.”
Talvi had described the operation as “a complex but necessary humanitarian mission.”
He added: “We don’t consider it an option, but rather an ethical obligation.”
However, as Uruguay’s government considered all people on board the ship to be infected – even if they tested negative – Talvi said this week there would be “practically no human contact” between the passengers and others during the transfer operation.
Aurore said it was covering the transfer costs for all passengers and that New Zealand was organizing further travel on from Melbourne for its citizens.
After the evacuation more than 80 crew members, as well as around 20 Europeans and Americans, will remain on board.
Those who have tested positive for the virus “will have to wait until they test negative” before heading home via Sao Paulo, Aurore said on Tuesday.
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Retrofitting is only available to the people with plenty of cash . Same as most other benefits .
All I read in the above article is that we need to lower our living standards drastically. I do not trust anyone who tells me we need to eat less meat and then replace it with processed crap.
@An Drew Bearla: Yes, all that came out of the big meeting in Davos is that we must stop eating meat and dairy or the world will starve, and we must share our cars or cycle or walk, all the mullarkey Ryan is spouting and all from a bunch that then sat down to a four course meat laden lunch after flying in on 1500 private jets. The narrative to blame the ordinary consumer and deflect away from their lavish carbon laden lifestyles is ridiculous. Animal farm springs to mind
Will do this, will improve that. All talk and no action. The government has no motivation to implement any of these policies. Still using diesel commuter trains ffs.
@Tomo: We are making progress faster than ever before. I would live to speed it up too, but denial of what’s happening is nor helpful.
Bottom line is what comes out of our chimneys and out of the vehicle tailpipes isn’t good for us and has resulted in worse health for our population and more deaths. Even if you think climate change isn’t real (it is) then only a fool would continue to not tackle us poisoning ourselves.
@Barry Somers: a few more new taxes will sort everything.
That’s the problem, the greens solution is to tax the problem with no alternative. Of course, people are turning against it
@Jim Buckley Barrett: Not true.
@Nicholas McMurry: Yes it is true. Tax tax tax from a fella that knows about as much about climate change as my 8yr old. All the solutions Eamo is pushing for at present are financially or infrastructurally unviable like hydrogen which is inhibitively expensive to make or offshore wind which we have no way due to planning restrictions and lack of infrastructure make, but which are the chief objectives of E3G which ol Eamo is/was a senior associate of, as usual the self serving bull we have gotten used to in Irish politics. Any man that signs off on tax incentives for fuel for private jets and the writing off of carbon footprint for such is not green. No viable alternatives for anything, no reduction in our carbon footprint despite all the waffle, lying about our agricultural footprint throwing our farmers and food producers under a bus because they are a soft target while letting big corporations off the hook by giving them all our carbon credits from our grasslands, hedgegrows and forestry. Ireland is not one of the worst polluters as we are so often told to justify taxing the life out of us we just fall foul of the carbon credit rules that the large industrial countries set up to make themselves look far better than they really are, America, Germany France etc
@Nicholas McMurry: of course its true, if the government and greens in particular wanted to actually do something that wasn’t a punitive tax measure, it would be a shock.
Insulation is the most effective measure, yet they persist in making the retrofitting policy, part of the convoluted seai scheme which requires “trained” certified installers, when homeowners could, depending on their current skills learn to install it just as effectively themselves, by watching a few instructional videos, just like the “trained” installers did…
Subsidising insulation for domestic projects with a zero vat rate, would encourage more people to retrofit insulation to their homes themselves, reducing the amount of heating from all sources, along with particulate and carbon emissions across the board.
Better put the old age pension up. Where will all the food come from? More homes will be needed.
Anyone find those TRVs (main image) a complete waste of time?
I find that after a year the da*n thing is stuck on full heat. (I’ve checked the pin underneath and it seems to move freely) Was this just another way for the plumbers to make a few bucks :) ?
So, if we live in England or Wales and insulate our homes we could live for 836,000 years. I don’t want to live that long.
Why does an article in an Irish publication write about a foreign country without stipulating that it is a study done in that foreign country?
have your say