Fears are growing for an elderly Australian who has been rushed into intensive care after being infected with coronavirus on the doomed Diamond Princess cruise ship.
The 78-year-old was one of 223 Australians quarantined on the ill-fated ship in Japan, and was flown to Darwin last Friday.
After tests showed the man had the deadly coronavirus, he was taken to his home state and is now in intensive care at the Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital.
The elderly man was evacuated with his wife, who does not have the virus, and was said to be a in a ‘serious but stable’ condition.
He is one of 23 people in Australia battling the virus, but there have been no deaths.
The ill-fated Diamond Princess cruise ship (pictured) was put into isolation in Japan, after passengers contracted the deadly coronavirus
Worldwide, the virus has wiped out more than 2,800 people and infected 82,000.
A spokeswoman for the hospital said the move into the intensive care unit was ‘precautionary’, and confirmed he had been in isolation at the hospital.
The hospital has four negative pressure rooms to treat coronavirus patients.
So far, two Japanese passengers who caught the virus on board the Diamond Princess have died.
Both were in their 80s, and suffered underlying health conditions.
At least 621 people on the ship tested positive for the virus, officially named Covid-19, making it the biggest cluster outside China.
It comes after Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared a coronavirus pandemic is ‘very much upon us’.
Launching an emergency plan on Thursday afternoon, he said the government were identifying ‘gaps in capabilities’ within Australia’s state-based health services.
Evacuees from the Diamond Princess (pictured) are seen arriving in Darwin after being rescued from the doomed cruise ship, which had been docked in Japan
Foreign embassies are seen lining up outside the Diamond Princess cruise ship (pictured) as citizens from across the world are finally being let off the boat
‘We believe that the risk of a pandemic is very much upon us,’ he told reporters in Canberra.
‘We need to take the steps necessary to prepare for such a pandemic.’
Speaking again on 2GB on Friday morning, he insisted that the public should ‘go about our business’.
He confirmed there are still 23 cases in Australia, eight of whom were on the Diamond Princess.
‘One of these is in a more serious condition in WA, we learnt today,’ he said.
‘But in the rest of the community we can go about our business.’
Crew members are seen aboard the doomed cruise ship, which has been docked in the Japanese port of Yokohama for weeks
Mr Morrison said that during the past 24 hours, the ‘rate of transmission of the virus outside of China is fundamentally changing the way we need to look at how this issue is being managed here in Australia’.
‘As a result, we’ve agreed today and initiated the implementation of the coronavirus emergency response plan,’ he said.
‘Based on the expert medical advice we have received, there is every indication the world will enter a pandemic phase of the coronavirus.’
At least 621 people on the ship (pictured) tested positive for the virus, officially named Covid-19, making it the biggest cluster outside China.
The Australian government has declared the emergency response plan a day after the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention forecast it would turn into a pandemic.
‘As a government, we need to take the steps necessary to prepare for such a pandemic,’ Mr Morrison said.
The elderly man is one of eight Australians evacuated from the cruise ship, which had been docked at Yokohama in Japan, who have tested positive for the disease.