Warning that ‘Aussies at risk’ under India travel ban
Australia’s chief medical officer has warned of “consequences” of the country’s travel ban on India. Professor Paul Kelly addressed his concerns in a letter to Health Minister Greg Hunt, highlighting the risk the ban would have on Australian citizens and permanent residents in Covid-ravaged India as a result of the pause on flights and entry into Australia.
“These include the risk of serious illness without access to healthcare, the potential for Australians to be stranded in a transit country, and in a worst-case scenario, deaths,” he wrote in the letter, which was tabled in Parliament yesterday.
“I consider that these serious implications can be mitigated through having the restriction only temporarily in place, i.e. a pause, and by ensuring there are categories of exemptions.”
Kelly provided his advice ahead of last Friday’s late announcement that all flights would be halted until May 15.
He said there remained a “significant risk” of spread from Australia’s hotel quarantine system, particularly from arrivals from India.
“Each new case identified in quarantine increases the risk of leakage into the Australian community through transmission to quarantine workers or other quarantined returnees and subsequently into the Australian community more broadly,” he wrote.
Kelly noted such a move would be the first time that such a determination had been used to prevent Australian citizens and permanent residents entering Australia.
He also asked for it to become an offence under the Biosecurity Act for anyone who had been in India in the past 14 days to come back to Australia. People who have been in India within the previous fortnight before their intended arrival in Australia will face a AU$66,600 ($71,786) fine as well as five years’ imprisonment for entering the country.
But Kelly said yesterday that the jail threat was not ordered by him. He said the criminal punishment was a separate part of Australia’s Biosecurity Act, but health authorities had not been asked to advise on that section of the government act.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison defended the Government’s move yesterday, saying he was making the “hard calls” that have helped save 30,000 Australian lives.
Morrison claimed Labor leader Anthony Albanese was “politicising” the flight ban, arguing it was “heartbreaking” but necessary to pause the repatriation flights. “We are deeply, deeply concerned about the humanitarian crisis in India. But the best way I can get them safely home is by doing what I am doing right now,” Morrison said.
Critics including former race discrimination commissioner Tim Soutphommasane have argued there’s “an inconsistency” in the Indian flight ban given Australia didn’t ban US flights when daily cases were even higher.
“I have clear advice from the chief medical officer that this is a decision that is supported,” Morrison said.
Health secretary Dr Brendan Murphy told a Senate estimates committee that the temporary ban was needed to take the pressure off quarantine systems. He said the Howard Springs quarantine centre at Darwin is at capacity.
“We’ve had more than 50 cases, positive cases nearly all from India and the [Northern] Territory health system is very concerned about that,” he said.