But the "permanently closed" Stockton Centre is unlikely to be used for COVID-19 quarantine, at least in the near future, an infection control expert says.

Responding to public speculation that the Stockton Centre could be repurposed "fairly quickly" as a quarantine facility now that NSW hotel quarantine has reached its "capacity", University of Newcastle professor Brett Mitchell said while the site had potential, most international travellers requiring quarantine would be landing in Sydney.

"Newcastle could be a spot for a quarantine facility because of the airport, but getting people from Sydney to here would be part of the challenge," Professor Mitchell said.

"It is important to reduce the risk as much as possible. Broadly speaking, we're going to need it to be close to an international airport - because we don't want people travelling long distances from an airport to a quarantine facility. We want them to be in areas that are largely outdoors, and not in built-up cities if possible.

"It may not be the ideal spot at the moment, but if there was consideration of different models, and Newcastle Airport could be used more internationally in future, the potential is there."

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The Newcastle Quarantine Station, which officially opened in 1900 according to old newspaper reports, previously stood on part of the Stockton Centre site.

It was developed in response to the bubonic plague scare, and it followed outbreaks of smallpox, typhoid and cholera.

The Newcastle community had agitated the government for the facility, given ships from all over the world were frequently arriving, carrying sickness and infectious diseases.

Before its closure in 2020, the Stockton Centre was a home for people with disabilities.

Now, it sits empty.

Health experts have been calling for more purpose-built facilities, much like the Howard Springs quarantine centre in Darwin, to help mitigate the risk of hotel quarantine breaches.

Professor Mitchell said existing sites could work as quarantine facilities, so long as they could be modified to ensure adequate ventilation giving the airborne nature of COVID-19 transmission.

But ideally, purpose-built quarantine facilities would help mitigate the risk of COVID-19 now, as well as for other diseases and outbreaks in the future.

"In 12 months time, we don't want to be starting to talk about purpose-built facilities," he said.

"We should be thinking about how this is all going to play out now. We know that respiratory pathogens continue to evolve. It is SARS-CoV-1 now, but we've had scares in the past with things like swine flu and variants of influenza, and so the issue of respiratory pathogens being a risk to human health is not going to go away. Having these facilities will also help in the long term to deal with emerging issues."

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