05/03/2020
NEWS STORY
As Italy suffers the highest death rate from the coronavirus outside China, Australia has introduced "advanced screening measures" for travellers from the country.
According to Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, travellers from Italy will face "advanced screening measures", which essentially means more questions than usual at check-in and having their temperatures checked on arrival.
"The Prime Minister announced in his one o'clock press conference the enhanced screening procedures and measures from Italy," Australian Grand Prix Corporation CEO, Andrew Westacott told Melbourne radio station 3AW, "and I think he made the point that there was about five times the volume of people coming into Australia from South Korea versus Italy.
"I guess the chief health officers and the input from the state health officers and up to the national security committee, they don't take into account events and other things, they take into account what's ultimately best for the national taking into account all inputs.
"The outcome is a very good outcome," he added, "because MotoGP events and others have been cancelled people can't get into the countries.
"The freight arrives between tomorrow and Saturday/Sunday out at Avalon. Then everyone from the world of Formula 1, including those teams which we should talk about in a bit more detail arrive from Thursday through to Tuesday next week."
Considering the unpredictability of the virus, when asked if the situation changes and travellers are actually banned from entering Australia, Westacott said: "I've learned through this exercise to not speculate on medical matters, but by that stage the very vast majority of the Formula 1 teams, and there's two teams from Italy plus Pirelli, would have been in the country, so it would just been the last few.
"I've adopted a practical view on this as well as the teams, while they still have the go through the enhanced screening measures - there's no exceptions made for Formula 1 personnel - there's going to be a level of self-policing because for a season and the intricacies of Formula 1, you're not going to put your team in jeopardy because you've had exposure to this. So they've been thinking about this for a long period of time in Europe."