Australia plans to reopen door to India

CANBERRA: Australia will lift a ban on its citizens returning from Covidravaged India next week, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said yesterday, as state officials reported an outbreak in Sydney appeared to be contained.

Morrison stood by his decision to impose a biosecurity order last month barring all travel to and from India, a policy that drew heavy criticism from lawmakers, expatriates and the Indian diaspora.

Morrison said the travel ban, which was controversially backed by jail terms and financial penalties for anybody who attempted to circumvent it by flying via a third country, had prevented Australia’s hotel quarantine system from being overwhelmed.

‘‘The order that we have put in place has been highly effective. It’s doing the job that we needed it to do, and that was to ensure that we could do everything we can to prevent a third wave of Covid19 here in Australia,’’ Morrison said.

Australia will charter three repatriation flights between May 15 and 31, prioritising people deemed most vulnerable, Morrison said.

Prospective travellers will need to return a negative Covid19 test, and will be required to undertake the standard 14day hotel quarantine imposed on incoming travellers.

New South Wales state Premier Gladys Berejiklian, meanwhile, said New Zealand’s decision to partially suspend a travel bubble with Australia as a result of new infections in Sydney was an ‘‘overreaction’’.

State health officials were still trying to track the missing links in the case of a 50yearold man who was diagnosed earlier this week with an Indian variant of Covid19 that he passed on to his wife.

Genomic sequencing had linked the case to a returned traveller from the United States, but there was no clear transmission path between the two people.

However, state health officials reported yesterday more than 13,000 tests conducted over the past 24 hours had found no additional cases, easing concerns about a wider outbreak. — Reuters