Travel insurance company TravelCard has announced new measures to help its customers who have been affected by the coronavirus outbreak. With almost 30,000 reported cases globally, and 14 confirmed in Australia, the coronavirus is making headlines around the world.
Declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Australian government has taken some drastic measures to help prevent the spread of the virus. The country has restricted the travel of Chinese nationals into the country while a chartered Qantas repatriation flight transported Australians in Wuhan to Christmas Island for a period of quarantine.
The costs of the coronavirus for Australians abroad in Wuhan or wider mainland-China can be high, as people try and change flights to return home. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that those on the Qantas flight out of ‘ground-zero’ may even have had to fork out $1,000.
TravelCard has taken the severity and significance of the issue on-board and has announced that cover will be extended to ensure Australians can return from China and Hong Kong safely. CEO Peter Klemt explained the extension and the decision to help those customers affected.
“We have made the decision to provide support to our customers by extending our leisure travel policy beyond its usual parameters,” said Klemt. “We will cover the cost, for TravelCard customers, of their repatriation by the Australian Government chartered flight to Christmas Island for those in the Hubei Province at $1,000 per person.”
With the world on alert and the Hubei province on lockdown, some Australians have found themselves caught in the mix – stuck in China or, worryingly, Wuhan.
“At a time when many Australians were travelling to celebrate Lunar New Year with family, they have found themselves in lockdown in the Wuhan area and the Hubei Province,” said Klemt. “We continue to talk and work with our customers in China to bring them home and get them to a safer place.”
Klemt explained that a lot of insurance policies, including Travelcard’s, do not cover costs associated with pandemics – which is why TravelCard has extended its cover, realising just how important it is to help bring people home.
These new measures also extend to those in mainland China and Hong Kong, who changed their flights to return home to Australia. On Sunday, TravelCard informed customers that if they wanted to change their flights and return before Thursday, it would cover the reasonable costs to do this.
“Given the seriousness of the emerging situation we have also supported our customers in China and Hong Kong returning to Australia by covering their reasonable costs of changing their return flights,” Klemt announced on Sunday. “The situation remains volatile, airlines are suspending or reducing flights and we want our customers to be safe.”
