Delhi; 14 May 2021 (UMMN): Out of 150 Australians booked on evacuation flight from India, over 40 have been found Covid-19 positive, and another 30 deemed as close contacts. Northern Territory Health officials confirmed that these pasengers could no longer fly back home.
Australian government’s India travel ban expires at midnight on Friday and the flight was due to leave New Delhi on Friday night and arrive in Darwin on Saturday morning.
According to Perth Now, executive director for the Centre of National Resilience Gabrielle Brown said the Commonwealth government’s decision to help fly Aussies home from the subcontinent was a “humanitarian effort”.
“The Northern Territory is in such a good position with no community transmission since the beginning of COVID, means that we have been able to accept this responsibility,” she told reporters on Friday afternoon.
“The importance of our role in infection control and in running quarantine as safely as possible for those residents coming into quarantine for our staff, and also for the broader Northern Territory community is not all lost on me, and it’s absolutely not lost on ... the Centre of National Resilience” said Gabrielle Brown.
