Two-year-old boy tests positive for Covid-19 in the NT after flying back to Australia from India

A two-year-old boy has tested positive to coronavirus after he recently returned to Australia with his family from virus-ravaged India. 

The Northern Territory government confirmed the positive case on Sunday, just days after the Federal Government declared the sub-continent nation as a ‘high risk’ zone and has slashed flights from India by 30 per cent cent.

The boy has been at the territory’s quarantine facility at Howard Springs 25km from Darwin since arriving back in Australia last week, where he’s recovering.

‘A two-year-old male who arrived on the repatriation flight from New Delhi on April 17 has tested positive for COVID-19,’ the Northern Territory government said. 

‘The child is asymptomatic and in the care of the AUSMAT team at the NT Centre for National Resilience.’

India is suffering through its darkest days since the pandemic began, with a huge spike in cases of 314,000 in a single day and hospitals at breaking point, fast running out of oxygen. 

A two-year-old boy is recovering at Darwin’s  Howard Springs quarantine facility (pictured) after he tested positive to coronavirus a week after returning from India

Almost 6,700 overseas arrivals have undergone quarantine at Howard Springs since repatriation flights to the Northern Territory began last October.

The latest case comes a day the territory recorded 10 new COVID-19 cases were quarantine on Saturday, including two US Marines.

Other cases recorded on Saturday include two women aged 31 and 32 and four males, including an infant, two boys aged three and six, and a 73 year-old, who arrived on a repatriation flight from eastern Indian city of Chennai on April 15. 

Two more women aged 34 and 36 who arrived from New Delhi on April 17 also tested positive on Saturday. 

Almost 6,700 overseas arrivals have undergone quarantine at Howard Springs since repatriation flights to the Northern Territory six months ago. Pictured are healthcare workers at the facility

The Northern Territory has not recorded a locally-acquired case since the start of the pandemic with all 161 cases detected in quarantine. 

Its tally of active cases currently stands at 49. 

The specialist health team chief at the Howard Springs quarantine facility insists the issue is under control with ‘stops and checks’ in place, despite a recent spike in cases from repatriated flights from India.

‘If we get to a particular point, say in excess of 10 or 12 per cent, we would slow down the flights and indeed be very cautious in terms of how many people we actually took on,’ the of the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre executive director Professor Len Notaras told the ABC.

‘We will maintain the very high level of dealing with those particular people,’ he said.

There are growing calls for the federal government to slash flights from India further after the country recorded 346,786 new cases on Saturday, setting a world record for the third straight day.

A man who returned to Western Australia from India was identified as the source of an outbreak which saw Perth and the surrounding Peel region enter a snap three-day lockdown.

All of the 161 cases recorded in the Northern Territory since the the start of pandemic have been international arrivals in quarantine. Pictured are returned travellers touching down in Darwin at the start of the pandemic

India is at breaking point as the nation battles a devastating second wave of the virus with overcrowded hospitals and oxygen supplies running low. 

Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared Australians will only be permitted to travel to a high-risk country under ‘very urgent circumstances’.

‘An arrangement where if you have been in a high-risk country in the previous 14 days, before getting on your last point of embarkation to Australia, then you would need to have had a PCR test 72 hours before leaving that last point of embarkation,’ he told reporters last week.

‘This would apply to India.’

India is grappling with a horror second wave of coronavirus. Pictured is a mourning relative performing the last rites of a loved one at a mass cremation in New Dehli