Coronavirus, Medi-Hotels

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (14:48): Supplementary: how much of that $3.9 million will be given to those hotels participating in the medi-hotel program?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:48): I will certainly take that on notice, too, but I do want to indicate that this is by no means covering the full cost of the medi-hotel program. One of the reasons is that the government of South Australia took very seriously—

The Hon. T.A. Franks: So the Pullman is not actually recouping their costs? That was my question—not SA Health but hotels.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: Sorry, I will certainly address that in my answer, but I still think it is important to make the point that, whilst under contracts, the providers of the hotel services will get paid in accordance with those contracts. The state government by no means recovers all its costs, inclusive of the hotel. There is the hotel provider, there is the police, there is the security, there is the nursing care, there is the in-reach mental health care and there are the buses.

This is a very expensive operation. I am told that the average cost of hotel quarantine is more than $600 per day, which equates to $8,700 over a 14-day quarantine period. What we recover I think is about $3,000 for a single, and then you add increments. My understanding is we fall well short of cost recovery.

We could get much closer to cost recovery if we provided a much more basic service, but the point I was trying to make is that this government takes very seriously its responsibility to ensure that quarantine is a public health measure that is not punitive. We try to provide that in what is a challenging environment. Two weeks in a hotel room is not something any of us choose and so we do what we can to make that experience as tolerable as possible.

I would like to pay tribute again to not only the members of our public health team but particularly our nursing workforce. They have shown themselves to be very innovative in providing support to people. We are still learning. We appreciate that there are complaints from time to time. The costs of this program are significant, but we don't shy away from them, because we believe we have responsibility to provide a quality form of quarantine.