( Telegraph )
An Australian man has been arrested after escaping his quarantine room on the fourth floor of a hotel using a rope made from bed sheets.
After arriving in Perth on an interstate flight from Brisbane, the man, 39, had his application for entry refused under the state's tough border entry rules intended to stop the virus entering from elsewhere in the country.
He was told to leave the state within 48 hours and taken to a hotel for temporary quarantine.
But just before 1am on Tuesday (local time) "he climbed out a window of the fourth-floor room using a rope made of bed sheets and fled the area", Western Australia Police said in a Facebook post.
They also posted photos of the makeshift rope hanging from a window on the brick building's top floor down to the street.
Police arrested him across town about eight hours later, and charged him with failing to comply with a direction and providing "false/misleading information".
He has since tested negative for Covid-19.
It comes as Australia faces its biggest lockdown yet, with roughly 13 million people across New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia affected by restrictions.
Just 11 per cent of Australians are fully vaccinated, despite the country’s small population and advanced health infrastructure.
On Tuesday former prime minister Kevin Rudd took aim at current PM Scott Morrison.
“Morrison has failed on quarantine, failed on vaccination and failed the people’s most basic security needs,” he wrote, noting that a number of polls had shown significant falls in support for Mr Morrison.
Earlier, former Treasurer Wayne Swan said Mr Morrison’s “vaccination bungles and hotel quarantine failures are the underlying cause of [the] harsh Sydney lockdowns, according to the New South Wales Premier.”
On Monday a major national poll showed the Labor opposition leading the government 53 per cent to 47 per cent on a two-party preferred basis. A federal election must be held before the end of June next year.
The delta variant has become a major problem in Australia. New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, reported 78 new cases on Tuesday, while Victoria recorded 13 new cases and South Australia, four.
New South Wales has recorded five Covid deaths in the recent outbreak.
As the city of Melbourne entered its fifth lockdown since the pandemic crisis began, resident Alan Scott wrote on social media that “quarantine and vaccination has always been federal responsibility, but has been a disaster”.
“Until Morrison accepts failures and fixes the problem, we’ll struggle to keep ahead of this pandemic,” he said.