Updated April 05, 2020 15:45:28

Photo: Commissioner Mick Fuller said the criminal investigation would get to the bottom of whether national biosecurity and state laws were broken. (ABC News)

NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller has announced a criminal investigation into the operator of the Ruby Princess cruise ship after the death of 10 passengers from coronavirus.

Ten passengers have died from COVID-19 since the vessel docked in Sydney last month and hundreds more have been confirmed as infected.

The Police Commissioner said information about the matter which had been already received would be handed to the homicide squad tomorrow.

Commission Fuller said there were "many unanswered questions" about the ship, which was operated by Carnival Australia and docked in Circular Quay in Sydney on March 19.

Passengers were allowed to disembark despite some experiencing flu-like symptoms.

"There seems to be absolute discrepancies between the information provided by Carnival and what I would see as the benchmark for the laws that the Federal Government and the State Government put in place in terms of protecting Australians from cruise ships when coronavirus had started," Commission Fuller said.

"The only way I can get to the bottom of whether our national biosecurity laws and our state laws were broken is through a criminal investigation."

Commissioner Fuller said on the day before passengers disembarked from the Ruby Princess there was a 17-minute call to triple-0 about two passengers who required medical assistance.

He said an ambulance supervisor was concerned about potential infection on the ship and escalated it to the NSW Police marine area command.

NSW Police said operation managers from Carnival told them COVID-19 was not an issue on the ship.

"From that perspective, there are many unanswered questions," Commissioner Fuller said.

The Commissioner said police had received a letter from Carnival stating it would cooperate with the investigation and hand over any information required.

That included emails, text messages and medical correspondence between the doctor and the ship's captain, it said.

More to come.

Topics: covid-19, diseases-and-disorders, infectious-diseases-other, health, government-and-politics, sydney-2000, nsw

First posted April 05, 2020 15:15:42