Continued controls on seafarers arriving in New South Wales now seem to be rather pointless because they can no longer fulfil their policy goals and their monetary and non-monetary costs now outweigh their benefits, Shipping Australia has said in a submission to the NSW Government.
NSW is reviewing its existing maritime public health order with the aim of introducing a new order in due course.
Shipping Australia notes that the commendable public policy goal is to prevent the introduction, and spread, of the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen. The ultimate aim is to prevent hospitalisation, admission to intensive care units and premature deaths in the population because of COVID.
However, it is now abundantly clear that the policy of imposing restrictions on the movements of seafarers arriving in New South Wales has been rendered irrelevant as (a) shipping companies have taken strong action to protect the health of their crews and (b) Omicron-COVID is now rampant in NSW. The threat of the transmission of the virus is from the shore to the crew. Or, to put it another way, it is the maritime crew that needs to be protected from the general NSW population.
Facts about Omicron and vaccinations
Omicron-COVID is highly infectious (also, see here). COVID has an incubation period of about five days and an infected person can spread the virus for a few days before and for a few days of that point, and so infected people can spread the virus for about 10 days or so in total. Omicron-COVID displaces other forms of COVID and it appears to induce the body to produce antibodies that are effective against Omicron-COVID (although re-infection is still possible) and ongoing high levels of protection against disease. It also induces antibodies against other variant forms of COVID. Omicron-COVID produces a much milder form of the COVID disease, resulting in less hospitalisation, admission to intensive care and premature death than previous variants.
COVID vaccines are highly effective against transmission of COVID (two doses are highly effective against all the non-Omicron variants; three doses are highly effective against transmission of the Omicron variant). COVID vaccines are highly effective against hospitalisation, admission to intensive care and premature death caused by COVID.
For the avoidance of doubt and confusion, nothing that we have written above should be taken in any way as being contrary to current NSW public vaccination advice which is this: “everyone aged 5 years and over is strongly encouraged to get vaccinated as soon as possible“.
Readers from anywhere in Australia can find a local vaccine clinic here.
Marine side protections
Ship’s crew are becoming increasingly vaccinated, which, as we know, is protective (but not proof) against transmission. As the end of December 2021, about 59.8% of seafarers have been vaccinated against COVID, according to the Neptune Declaration Crew Change Indicator. Not only is the seafaring population becoming highly vaccinated, the rate of vaccinations of seafarers are increasing. Seafarers are becoming increasingly less able to transmit COVID to the NSW population.
Shipping companies are also deploying a wide range of checks and measures to combat COVID, such as isolating seafarers for an appropriate period before they board ships, sanitising ships, requiring social distancing, issuing personal protective equipment to crew, restricting the number of visitors on board (e.g. requiring electronic delivery of documents etc), imposing access controls and movement restrictions for shore personnel who are required to physically go aboard a vessel and so on.
Meanwhile, the ships themselves can be thought of as mobile, floating, quarantine stations. No-one can just rock-up and join a ship. Ports are high-security zones to which the general public do not have access (and so cannot freely interact with ship crew), and the ships themselves are large metal objects with highly restricted points of access. The flow of personnel in and out can be highly controlled. Travel times from south east Asia to Sydney for container ships are about 14 days and the travel time for dry bulkers to Newcastle and Kembla from north Asia is even longer (as the distance is greater and the bulkers are slower).
As we know, the COVID infectious period is about 10 days and the NSW isolation period is about 7 days. So seafarers are effectively doing at least double the isolation time that the NSW Government requires of the general population. Their time aboard ship is also effectively an isolation time longer than the infectious period of the virus.
Accordingly, seafarers present vanishingly little risk to the population of NSW.
Shore side issues
As of 22 January 2022, the John Hopkins University was reporting via “Our World in Data” that the seven day average new COVID cases was about 26,665, which was considerably down from an earlier seven day average peak of about 46,708 cases a day. (See: google search “how many COVID cases in NSW today”). COVID cases have fallen further and the current (26 January) seven day average in NSW is about 19,766 cases.
Meanwhile, as at 20:00 on 23 January 2022, the NSW Health Department reported that 95.3% of people aged 16+ have had one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and that 93.9% of people aged 16+ have had two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine. Furthermore, 33.5% had received a third dose.
It is clear that COVID is already very well established in the NSW population. It therefore follows that the risk is of transmission from the shore side to the maritime crew i.e. the general population is more likely to make the seafaring population sick than the other way around.
Given, that the NSW population is already very highly vaccinated and is experiencing ongoing high rates of infection, both of which boost resistance to hospitalisation, intensive care and premature death, it is clear that restrictions on seafarer movements have little to no extra protection for public health in NSW.
Time, effort, burden and financial costs
Maintaining controls on the movement of seafarers also carries costs and risks.
Safe operation of ships requires that crew are appropriately rested and cared for. Fatigue is a known cause of injuries, fatalities and maritime accidents that have led to maritime disasters such as groundings, collisions and oil spill pollution. Continued restrictions on seafarers, especially crew changes and shore leave, could lead to maritime accidents.
Seafarers have legal rights to shore leave and repatriation under the Maritime Labour Convention. Not allowing seafarers to have shore leave and interfering with their ability to be repatriated via a crew change is a gross breach of the human and legal rights of seafarers. There have been instances of crew members waiting at the top of the gangway with their bags packed, ready to depart, but the approval to disembark has not been given in time or at all. The ship, with the seafarer still aboard, has had to sail on. We can only imagine how crushing it would be for that to happen at the end of a nine-month shift.
Ocean shipping is vital for the continued operation of the economy in New South Wales and Australia. About 99.9% of all physical goods and commodities are brought to / from Australia by sea and international trade supports one in five jobs (about 2.6 million Australian workers). Each day, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of containerised goods cross the wharves at our top four main container ports. If there is a simultaneous, country-wide disruption at the main container ports then the direct and indirect losses in the economy are in the order of millions of dollars a day.
Existing controls on the movement of seafarers create a variety of bureaucratic issues (paperwork and the like). This can interfere with access to medical care.
Crew sometimes need access to medical care. Local shipping offices and ship agents have to arrange for doctors and dentists to visit the wharf area of a terminal. Even in the best of times, anyone who has ever sought access to a shipping terminal can confirm it’s not always easy. Arranging for medical personnel to visit can be especially difficult because doctors and dentists have their own medial practices to attend to – their time is limited. If follow-up care is needed then there has to be exemption approval from NSW Maritime Police and the NSW Health Department. This can be difficult to tie-up with a ship as its time in port is limited.
Off-signing crew require exemption approvals from the NSW Maritime Police and the NSW Health Department; crew must undergo a PCR test once they have departed the vessel and either leave the country immediately or go into quarantine. Given that seafarers are now highly vaccinated, and given that the general population is even more so, and further given that COVID is already rampant in the community, then it seems pointless to require seafarers to immediately leave the country or go into hotel quarantine so as to prevent the spread of COVID. Given the difficulties and costs of doing a PCR, it would be beneficial to allow seafarers to undertake rapid antigen testing.
Conclusions and recommendations
Policy measures restricting the movement of seafarers to control the introduction and spread of COVID among the general NSW population have by now been rendered utterly ineffective. There are no longer any, or very few, benefits to such controls. Meanwhile, the costs to seafarers and shipping companies of such controls is very high and the costs of controls on seafarer movements on the grounds of public health massively outweigh the little to non-existent benefits. Requiring seafarers to wear masks when at indoor public areas may well have benefits and little costs, so there are no objections to this particular policy.
It is time to abolish, discontinue and not renew restrictions on seafarer movements. It’s time to make crew changes easier. It is time to stop requiring seafarers to isolate when entering or leaving the country. It is time to stop breaching the human and legal rights of seafarers by allowing them to use their rights to shore leave.
At the very least, the NSW Government should enable seafarers to get easy access to medical care. They should be able to go to the doctor or dentist just like anybody else.
The NSW Government has, in recent months, repeatedly told us all that we need to live with COVID. It’s time to put that policy into effect on the waterfront.
