NSW international student quarantine accomodation revealed

Australia will allow 500 international students to enter Sydney in December as part of a quarantine trial.

The students will be quarantining in accomodation in the inner-city Redfern neighbourhood.

The Eveleigh Street building was recently completed by student housing firm Scape.

Each student will have a room to themselves with a bathroom, kitchen area and double bed – as well as a window with spectacular views of the city.

“We are so delighted to be able to welcome the students,” Scape chief executive Anouk Darling said.

The trial will accept the 500 students in two groups of 250, who will do 14 days in quarantine at a time, beginning in early December.

The students must be fully vaccinated with a coronavirus vaccine approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration to be allowed in.

That will be a problem for many students from countries like China, which have relied on domestically produced vaccines such as Sinovax.

Only four vaccines have been approved by Australia’s TGA: AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said on Friday there was no wiggle-room when it came to the vaccine requirement.

“They will need to be double-vaccinated with a vaccine that has already been deemed to be adequate and effective – that’s just the way it is,” she said.

Only students who are already enrolled at NSW universities will be able to take part in the trial.

Schools will get allotted a certain quota from the 500 quarantine spots and will begin inviting students to express their interest in returning in the coming weeks.

The students will have to pay for their own airfare and will be brought in on chartered flights. The cost of the quarantine will be borne by the universities, although students may have to front some of the money for accomodation.

It’s not clear yet what that cost will be.

“Specific details about the costs involved are still being finalised at this stage and will be communicated directly to international students,” officials write on a website that was launched on Friday.

“Returning students will be approached by their institutions based on a range of criteria and their individual situations.”

Students will be required to arrange the accommodation where they’ll stay post-quarantine prior to entering the country.

Ms Darling said the project had been proposed to the NSW Treasurer by the chairman of Scape at a meeting in May.

“He showed him a plan and said it was possible to do it outside of the (arrivals) cap,” she said.

In the following months the project went to tender and Scape won out with its recently completed Eveleigh Street building.

The construction finished during the pandemic and the 21-floor building has been fitted out with an air-conditioning system that’s meant to prevent air from leaking from room to room.

At ground level, a room that will one day be a cinema has been allocated for a police command centre, where officers will be able to review CCTV and monitor the hallways.

Each room has an automatic sensor on the handle that will register if the door is opened.

“It can sense whether the door is opened from the inside or outside, so we’ll know if it’s a scheduled meal delivery or if there's a potential breach on the floor,” Ms Darling said.

“It’s such a complex problem and it’s so important to get it right. But I think this would be the safest place for anyone to quarantine in Australia.”