International airline crews are exempt from NSW’s coronavirus hotel quarantine program — here’s why

NSW’s hotel quarantine program is being put under the microscope after a van driver who takes international flight crews to and from Sydney Airport tested positive for COVID-19 today.

The state’s chief health officer Kerry Chant said authorities had a “plausible hypothesis” about how the man became infected and that genomic sequencing would confirm the origins of his coronavirus strain.

Those results will not be known for up to 48 hours, but NSW’s hotel quarantine program — and specifically, how international airline crews are treated — is already being scrutinised.

Earlier this month, a cleaner who worked at a Sydney quarantine hotel contracted the virus and NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said she had likely been infected by airline…