Mr Morrison flagged Australia and India will work together to promote greater access to vaccines including through the World Trade Organisation.
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“We won’t forget India’s generosity in exporting vaccines. We’ll work closely on global challenges,” Mr Morrison tweeted after the call.
The Howard Springs quarantine centreis expanding to 2000 quarantine places,but Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly said it was limited in how many infections it could cope with.
“We are in a very off-the-charts situation now than what we designed the quarantine facilities to use,” he told the COVID-19 committee.
Department of Health assistant secretary Caroline Edwards said the Northern Territory government was working to boost its capacity to handle cases.
“The Northern Territory had designed that facility on a lower infection rate and is now in the process of ramping up,” she said.
Australians who test positive for COVID-19 will not be allowed to board the repatriation flights,and the government has introduced a double-testing regime before departure to catch more cases of the disease before it reaches the country.
Familiesspoke of their distress at being separated from their children for many months,telling a parliamentary COVID-19 committee they were missing milestones with their children and struggling to cope with the lengthy separation.
Drisya and Dilin,who chose not to use their last names,had left their five-year-old daughter with her grandparents in India for a slightly longer holiday. But repeated attempts to return to collect her were foiled early in the pandemic,Drisya said,and Dilin said in the year without her they have missed some of the prime of her childhood.
“When we see her,when we can,she will have grown up a lot. And that’s time we have lost that we can never get back,” he told the committee.
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade first assistant secretary Lynette Wood said the department was working to get vulnerable people home as soon as possible.
“We’ve already reached out today to those who are on our list that we’ve identified as vulnerable,offering them that very first flight,and looking forward to the response and getting as many people on those early flights as we possibly can,” she said.
Australia’s High Commissioner to India Barry O’Farrell said India had 3.5 million confirmed active cases of COVID-19,taking it to a total of 21 million cases since the pandemic began. On Thursday 3943 deaths were recorded,taking the death toll to 330,000. He confirmed at least one Australian permanent resident had died in India,but it was not yet known whether they had the virus.
A Melbourne man stranded in Delhi with his elderly mother feared he was putting his life at risk just by going out for bare necessities.
“We are living in an area which is experiencing a tsunami of COVID-19 infections,” he told the parliamentary committee.
“We think it is just a matter of time when we may get infected and get into serious trouble. Considering the healthcare system here is overwhelmed and almost dysfunctional. People are dying on the streets because of lack of oxygen.”
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