Dr. Scott Kitchener1
1Australian Centre For Health Law Research
The first quarantine legislation for the New South Wales colony was passed in 1832, to protect maritime arrival of infectious disease. In the Constitution Act, 1901 (UK) quarantine was the only health power provided to the new nation. This led to the Quarantine Act, 1908 (Cth) and ultimately the Biosecurity Act, 2015 (Cth) in effect at the arrival of SARS-CoV2 to Australia in January 2020. Curiously this was not the legal framework employed in Queensland to limit COVID-19 transmission despite the Public Health Act 2005 (Qld) not mentioning quarantine at this time.
Upon declaration of a Public Health Emergency in January 2020 by the Queensland Minister for Health, urgent and extensive amendments were made for new emergency powers and a legislative framework reflecting the technical nature and rapid rate of change of the novel Coronavirus epidemiology, using a new system of statutory instruments referred to as Chief Health Officer Directions. Since, there have been 13 Directions regarding quarantine for close contacts of COVID-19 cases; 60 Directions issued requiring interstate arrival quarantine and 23 directing quarantine for international arrivals.
Transmission of SARS-CoV2 was limited effectively in Queensland pending the development and implementation of a population vaccination program that effectively replaced quarantine. The legal and ethical challenges of the earlier Coronavirus-related SARS epidemic in 2003 gave rise to principles for considering the legal and ethical challenges. These principles have been applied to the contemporary legal context of quarantine on the background of the available epidemiology and outcomes achieved in Queensland.
Biography:
Dr. Kitchener is a Public Health Physician and Medical Administrator with Queensland Health, lectures in Health Law with QUT and undertakes research in public health law and ethics with the Australian Centre for Health Law and Research at QUT. He was involved in the original response to SARS-CoV2 as the Senior Medical Advisor to the Queensland Chief Health Officer, advised on the new Queensland legislation replacing the Health Act, 1936 with the Medicines and Poisons Act, 2021. He is now the regional lead for implementation of the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2021 (Qld) in the role of executive lead for medicine, public health and research in Wide Bay. In this role, he is the principle medical advisor regarding health law and ethics matters in the region.