A spokeswoman for NT Chief Minister Michael Gunner said the situation in India was worrying.
“All repatriation from India to the Territory are currently paused. We will only resume flights when we receive clinical advice that is appropriate to do so,” she said.
The spokeswoman reassured Territorians that despite the increase of cases in quarantine,the community could be confident the health system had the capacity and expertise to safely care for them.
Australia has not previously halted all direct flights from individual countries.
In the US,daily cases peaked at 300,000 and deaths peaked at more than 3360 in early January according to data collated by theNew York Times. In the UK daily cases peaked at over 76,000 and deaths peaked at just over 1300 in late January.
India is currently reporting about 3000 deaths and 360,000 cases per day,but those numbers are believed by experts to be massively under-reported.
Loading
“It’s a complete massacre of data,” said Bhramar Mukherjee,an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan who has been following India closely. “From all the modelling we’ve done,we believe the true number of deaths is two to five times what is being reported.”
Professor McMillan said a significant proportion of the Indian population was now infected with COVID-19,and despite pre-departure tests,people were still testing positive early in their quarantine stay.
“We are seeing some evidence that people who have the variants of concern do appear to be sicker than those earlier on in the pandemic,” she said. “In order to ensure that we could maintain the effectiveness of our quarantine program,the decision was made to slow the numbers of flights and the number of people coming into Australia.”