Australia authorities reported that the Mitsui O.S.K. Lines
bulk carrier Vega Dream has been permitted to sail from its anchorage off Port
Hedland despite crew members being in isolation aboard the vessel after testing
positive for COVID-19. The vessel is believed to be sailing to the Philippines.
Before the ship’s departure, the Western Australian
Department of Health offered humanitarian assistance to the COVID-19 positive
crew. They were told that medical intervention was not required and the offer
of assistance was declined.
The Department’s public health experts also provided advice
to the vessel around infection prevention and control. The shipping agent was
also offered access to the Department’s vessel deep-cleaning plans which they
reported had been employed successfully on the cruise ship Artania and
livestock carrier Al Kuwait, both of which had COVID-19 outbreaks earlier in
the year in Perth, as well as being used with the Patricia Oldendorff, another
bulk carrier that had also had a recent outbreak of COVID-19 among its crew
while at Port Hedland.
The outbreak on the Vega Dream was identified when a crew
member was taken ashore for medical treatment overnight on October 10. The
vessel had a crew of 20 aboard and later testing identified six additional crew
members as positive. Those crew members were placed in isolation aboard the
vessel and reported not to need medical attention.
The Vega Dream was fully loaded with her cargo of ore and
ordered to leave the dock for an anchorage offshore. Australian Maritime Safety
Authority gave clearance for the vessel to depart on October 14 and it is
currently projected to arrive in the Philippines on October 21.
When the first case of the virus was identified, the Western
Australia authorities implemented their emergency plan but they later issued
assurances that there had been no exposure and it believed there was minimal
risk. The pilot who had been aboard the vessel, however, was in quarantine they
said purely as a precaution. Questions were later raised if the crew had in
fact been on the dock and interacting with shore side personnel during the time
it was loading in Port Hedland. The vessel was operating under charter to the
Australian mining company BHP.
After the vessel moved out to the anchorage it was no longer
under the authority of Western Australia, but remained within the jurisdiction
of the federal government. As a result, the Western Australia health minister
Roger Cook spoke out on the local media calling on the federal government to
take additional action both to safeguard the seafarers and the citizens of the
state. He said that seafarers were already working under difficult conditions
and questioned if appropriate safeguards were being taken.
The concerns in Western Australia were raised because the
Vega Dream was the second vessel in a matter of days to have an outbreak of the
virus among its crew. Another bulker, the Patricia Oldendorff has a more
widespread outbreak where most of the vessel’s crew were quarantined onshore.
That vessel was cleared to depart Australia at the same time the incident
surfaced on the Vega Dream. Because both vessels had crew members from the
Philippines and had recently carried out crew changes in the Philippines, the
Western Australia health authorities called on both the Philippines and
Australia’s federal government to take more action to ensure that crew members
infected with the virus were not arriving in its ports. The health minister
also called on the mining companies that were employing the vessel or working
with the ship owners to take additional steps for the welfare of the ships’
crew as well as the miners and employees in the port managing the loading of
the vessels.
Australian media raised the fear that since most restrictions
and precautions have been removed on the community in Western Australia, the
introduction of the virus from one of the ship could possibly spread rapidly
through the community with significant consequences. The federal government
said it was working to ensure that proper precautions were being enacted
including steps in the Philippines to identify seafarers with the vius before
boarding ships bound for Australia.