Australian government to start repatriating citizens stuck in India as soon as flight ban ends | Health
The Morrison government will begin repatriating Australians stranded in India as soon as its travel ban ends on 15 May, with evacuated citizens and permanent residents to quarantine at Howard Springs near Darwin.
Scott Morrison told reporters on Friday the government expected to arrange three repatriation flights from India between 15 May and the end of the month, “bringing back the most urgent of cases”.
While an estimated 9,000 Australians are stuck in India and wish to return home, about 900 of those are classed as vulnerable.
Before a national cabinet meeting on Friday, the prime minister confirmed that the government would insist on any Australians being repatriated first test negative to a Covid-19 polymerase chain reaction test and a rapid antigen test.
He said this requirement would minimise the risk of Covid-19 cases of being brought into Australia.
When asked whether this meant people with acute cases of Covid would not be repatriated, Morrison said: “Rapid antigen testing is a requirement and a negative test to get on a border flight to Australia. I’m sure that’s what all Australians would expect.”
He announced the plans in Newcastle after the government finessed the details at a meeting of cabinet’s national security committee late on Thursday.
While there are expected to be three government-arranged rescue flights in the second half of May, Morrison said the government was yet to make a decision on resuming commercial flights.
The prime minister defended the controversial travel ban – which criminalised the return of anyone who had been in India in the previous two weeks – but confirmed it would end as scheduled on 15 May.
“There was a great risk when we put the border security arrangement in place through the health minister that we would have undermined our medium to longer term capability to bring people home,” Morrison said.
“It was the smart, sensible, wise and compassionate thing to do to put the pause in place, to ensure that it was done in a way that we would have the right effect so we would be able to safely resume repatriation flights.
“The biosecurity arrangement will remain in force, unchanged, until 15 May as it was designed to do and then we will commence those repatriation flights again.”
The foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, told reporters in London on Thursday night that the government was not expecting to extend the ban.
“Based on the advice that we have at this point, we fully expect it not to be extended beyond that date,” she said.
“We intend for facilitated flights to resume beyond that. My department has been working with counterparts in the airlines and with counterparts on the ground in India throughout this entire process with that view in mind.”
India is enduring a deadly second Covid wave that has overwhelmed hospitals and left thousands dead.
Australian citizens and permanent residents returning from the country will quarantine at the Howard Springs facility – a former mining camp just outside Darwin.
By next Saturday the facility – which is expanding to be able to take up to 2,000 travellers a fortnight – is expected to be close to empty.
The government has argued that infection rates in quarantine facilities, particularly Howard Springs, were up to seven times higher than its target of 2% and a “temporary pause” on flights from India was needed to give authorities time to deal with the caseload already in the country.
The government has faced intense pressure to help Australians stranded in India, including from former cricketer-turned-commentator Michael Slater, who told the prime minister on social media he had “blood on your hands”. “Take your private jet and come and witness dead bodies on the street,” Slater said this week.
The government’s decision to criminalise travel from India, threatening huge fines and jail sentences, attracted particular fury.
Morrison said the government hadn’t “accentuated that point”. “It was picked up on in the media and they have highlighted that,” he said.
But the penalties were spelled out in a media release from the federal health minister, Greg Hunt, issued late on Friday, which said: “Failure to comply with an emergency determination under the Biosecurity Act 2015 may incur a civil penalty of 300 penalty units, five years’ imprisonment, or both.”
On Thursday India it broke global records, reporting 412,784 new cases and 3,980 deaths. But experts believe the true extent of the outbreak is under-reported and the real toll significantly higher.
K Vijay Raghavan, the principal scientific adviser to the Indian government, conceded that health officials had underestimated the “ferocity” of the second wave and cautioned that “a phase three is inevitable”.
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