BRISBANE (LifeSiteNews) — A new COVID quarantine camp for unvaccinated travelers has opened in Australia and is set to welcome up to 1,000 “guests” by April.
The controversial quarantine facility, called “Queensland Regional Accommodation Centre” or “Wellcamp,” is located just outside the city of Toowoomba, about an hour’s drive from Brisbane, the capital of the state of Queensland.
The facility is already hosting 500 beds, and another 500 are expected to be ready by early April.
The first small group of unvaccinated international travelers, numbering fewer than 10, was taken by bus from a quarantine hotel in Brisbane to the camp on Saturday after flying in from New Zealand, according to ABC News Australia.
Visitors at the camp will be required to pay for their own two-week stay, as 9News Australia reported in a Tweet.
Queensland’s newest quarantine facility ‘Wellcamp’ has opened.
Visitors will be required to pay their own way for their two-week stay, the same price as hotel quarantine.
The facility is due to scale up to a thousand beds in April. #9News
MORE INFO: https://t.co/2U2DmOPQc6 pic.twitter.com/eVTayNjypw
— 9News Australia (@9NewsAUS) February 5, 2022
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Currently, only unvaccinated travelers will be sent to the camp, as there are no longer any quarantine requirements for fully vaccinated travelers. Fully vaccinated travelers need only to show proof of a negative rapid antigen test taken within 24 hours of arriving in the country.
On Monday, Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that his country will reopen its border to all vaccinated visa holders and international travelers on February 21.
Australia is one of the first countries in the world to have built and used so-called quarantine camps, and Wellcamp is the second to have made headlines.
Last November, the government of Australia’s Northern Territory (NT) ordered the transfer of 38 Australians from a remote Aboriginal town to another quarantine facility called Howard Springs, located near Darwin, because nine people there had tested positive for COVID-19. On December 1, three teenage boys attempted to escape Howard Springs before being arrested by police.
Also in November, Haley Hodgson, a healthy Australian woman, was held for 14 days in Howard Springs against her will because she failed to get tested for COVID-19.
“These COVID camps are real,” Hodgson warned in an interview with reporter and freedom activist Monica Smit.
“They’re building one in Melbourne now,” she added.
Although the new quarantine facility in Queensland is expected to host exclusively unvaccinated travelers, Hodgson warned that “if anyone becomes a close contact, it doesn’t matter if you’re fully-vaxxed, one-vaxxed, or non-vaxxed: you can get sent to these camps no matter what if you’re a close contact.”
Germany is also following in Australia’s footsteps. A recent survey by German newspaper Welt am Sonntag found that at least 15 people have been taken to quarantine facilities in Germany’s 10 largest cities since the beginning of the year.