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Warning: this article contains the names of Aboriginal people who have died.
A Northern Territory Coroner has found staff at a national COVID-19 quarantine centre failed in their duty of care to two Aboriginal women who died at the facility.
Coroner Elisabeth Armitage determined NT Health Department staff at the facility adopted a ‘wait for something to go wrong and then transfer her’ approach to one of the women, whose chronic illness and COVID-19 infection was ‘seriously underestimated’.
The quarantine facility at Howard Springs near Darwin was at the centre of Australia’s emergency response to the global spread of COVID-19.
As the nation’s largest quarantine facility, the former workers’ village, dubbed the “Centre for National Resilience”, housed more than 64,000 people over the two years from early 2020 to June 2022.
While it was hailed as the “gold standard’ at the time, four people died in the facility.
Three of those deaths were the subject of investigation by Northern Territory Coroner Elisabeth Armitage.
Woman’s health issues were ‘seriously underestimated’
46-year-old Aboriginal woman Karen Bading was ordered into quarantine at Howard Springs in January 2022. Less than a fortnight later, she was dead.
Suffering from a host of chronic underlying health conditions, including a second bout of COVID-19, Ms Bading had been vomiting for three 3 days in the lead up to her death.
Judge Armitage found Ms Bading should never have been sent to the Howard Springs facility.
“[Her] severe chronic ill-health, and recent medical history, meant that she should have been transferred directly to the Royal Darwin Hospital and quarantined there,” she found.
Of most concern was the treatment Ms Bading received once inside the facility and the lack of “meaningful assessment” of her suitability for quarantine.
There was no review of medical records when Ms Bading was admitted, and observations were not added to her medical records.
Citing her intake form, the coroner found “no risk assessment was undertaken upon her arrival to the facility”.
“It is unlikely that any questions were asked regarding her co-morbidities, and significant recent medical history,” Judge Armitage said.
The coroner found Ms Bading’s chronic ill health was “seriously underestimated”, and NT Health staff at the facility “adopted a ‘wait-and-see’ approach to the detriment of Ms Bading”.
“Systems for assessing and recording the clinical conditions of its residents were inadequate,” the Coroner said.
The Coroner found staff relied heavily on telephone checks that mostly involved “basic COVID-19 questions”.
Mother contracted deadly disease at quarantine facility
A mother of three referred to as Ms Dick for cultural reasons died at the quarantine facility in December 2021.
The 50-year-old suffered from diabetes and kidney disease. She died from of a tropical disease, common across Northern Australia, called melioidosis.
The coroner ruled Ms Dick contracted the disease while in quarantine at the Howard Springs facility.
Last year her family launched a civil case in the federal court to sue the Northern Territory government for false imprisonment and wrongful death, arguing Ms Dick would not have contracted the disease if she wasn’t removed from her home and placed into quarantine.
Ms Dick was evacuated from her remote community of Robinson River in the Gulf of Carpentaria in November 2021 after a COVID-19 outbreak in the community.
While the coroner praised the efforts of NT Health Department staff to contain the outbreak, she questioned the consent process surrounding the evacuation of members of the community to Darwin.
Judge Armitage expressed “real doubts about the quality of any ‘consent’ she (Ms Dick) provided and find positively that it did not amount to ‘informed consent.'”
She also found the model of care at the facility did not meet the needs of the cohort of residents who arrived from Robinson River.
The coroner made 15 recommendations urging greater assessment and monitoring of people ordered into quarantine in any future pandemic and improving planning around whether consent is required for evacuations.
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