Australia is expected to ban all international flights from India after a man returning from a wedding in the South Asian nation contracted Covid and sparked a snap three-day lockdown.
The national security committee will hold urgent meetings on Tuesday to discuss harsher travel restrictions and decide on assistance for India, which is currently in the midst of a catastrophic coronavirus outbreak.
There are an expected 8000 Australians currently trying to get back from India.
Repatriation and direct flight arrivals from India were cut by 30 per cent last week, with those who have been in the nation during the past two weeks required to test negative for Covid within three days of boarding a flight to Australia.
Health minister Greg Hunt on Monday afternoon confirmed stopping all flights from India could be an option if health authorities advised the move was necessary.
‘If those additional measures are recommended, we will take them with the heaviest of hearts but without any hesitation,’ he said.
Australia will decide on Tuesday whether to stop all international flights from India as the nation battles a catastrophic coronavirus outbreak. Pictured, a returned traveller arriving at a quarantine hotel in Melbourne earlier this month
Health Minister Greg Hunt (pictured) on Monday afternoon confirmed stopping international flights from India was on the table
The infected man that led to Perth and the surrounding Peel region being plunged into a three-day lockdown had provided ‘profound’ reasons that saw him granted travel exemption to go to India and then return to Australia.
The lockdown is set to end at midnight AWST on Monday.
The man is understood to have left Perth and headed to India on December 12 for a wedding and returned to the city with his new bride on April 10 before he tested positive while in quarantine at the Mercure hotel three days later.
The virus was passed to his wife and spread into other rooms on the same floor, infecting three others.
Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said the infected man’s travel was approved months ago under the old criteria, which have since been dramatically tightened.
‘A wedding would be very unlikely to be approved,’ she told 6PR radio.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said public sentiment was against allowing Australians to head overseas for social events.
But she also argued states must pull their weight in helping Australians return from overseas, arguing NSW has done more than its share regarding hotel quarantine.
India recorded 352,991 confirmed coronavirus cases on Monday. Pictured, exhausted workers, who bring dead bodies for cremation, sit on the rear step of an ambulance inside a crematorium, in New Delhi
There is growing outrage over the decision to let an infected man back into Australia from India on April 10. He tested positive while in quarantine at The Mercure Hotel in Perth (the hotel is pictured)
Australian Medical Association WA president Andrew Miller said innocent people who were arriving without coronavirus were being infected in quarantine.
Dr Miller described the system as an abuse of human rights, calling for mining camps to replace hotels as quarantine centres.
‘The issue is that hotel quarantine isn’t fit for purpose,’ he told ABC radio.
WA Premier Mark McGowan wants the federal government to open military bases and Christmas Island to quarantine overseas travellers.
Defence Minister Peter Dutton has pushed back against the idea, saying such facilities are not fit for purpose.
But Christmas Island was used in March and April last year for people returning from China and Japan.
Repatriation and direct flight arrivals from India to Australia were cut by 30 per cent last week. Pictured passengers at Perth Airport in December
‘Our quarantine system is in a mess. Scott Morrison has got to stop pretending that it’s not his job to fix it,’ Labor health spokesman Mark Butler said.
India recorded 352,991 cases on Monday, the fifth-straight day of setting a grim world record for most new infections.
Mr Hunt said India’s request for oxygen would be considered, while non-invasive ventilators are likely to be provided.
‘India is literally gasping for oxygen,’ Mr Hunt said.
He said India’s humanitarian crisis was unfolding on an unimaginable scale.
‘We remember the agony that our own Indian community is faced with. It’s very important that we are sensitive to the suffering that they face, and their friends and their family and their loved ones overseas face,’ Mr Hunt said.
