Risk of super-spreading event in Villawood Detention Centre if governments do nothing
“As south-west Sydney struggles with lockdown, a potential super spreading event lurks unseen behind the barb wire of Villawood Detention Centre, a Border Force facility at the centre of the region,” Mary Waterford AM, Chair of Sydney Alliance said.
Every day more than 100 hundred guards and support workers move in and out of the Border Force Facility in the middle of South west Sydney. No-one is prepared to say how many workers have been vaccinated or tested for Covid-19 or when the residents inside the facility will be vaccinated.
Since March last year, when we first began to respond to the coronavirus pandemic in Sydney, the number of people seeking asylum detained in the facility has increased to over 480, making Villawood the largest detention centre in the country. According to one of the residents who has elected to remain anonymous, ”There is no social distancing. No public notices. No gloves or masks. No sanitiser. 13 people share two bathrooms. Everyone in the kitchen together, everyone doing activities together. In the small bedrooms with double bunks, social distancing is not possible.”
Ms Waterford added, “These overcrowded conditions and lack of personal protective equipment put staff, their families, residents, the community in south-west Sydney and the whole of NSW at risk. It should be a priority for the government to vaccinate facility staff and people detained there as well as provide personal protective equipment. All with the ultimate goal of releasing people in immigration detention into the community where they can get on with rebuilding their lives.”
“Sydney Alliance represents unions, faith groups and community organisations who are deeply concerned about this situation. Many of our members are part of community in south-western Sydney City and are concerned for every person in Villawood.”
The June 2021 review of Management of COVID risks in Detention from The Australians Human Rights Commission noted that, “Immigration detention facilities, like other places of detention, are a high-risk setting for the spread of COVID-19. People live in close proximity with one another, in most cases sharing bedrooms, bathrooms and other enclosed communal spaces, and this results in a heightened risk of rapid person-to-person transmission of COVID-19 in the immigration detention population, should there be exposure or the introduction of cases into a facility.”
