Highlights
- Australia pauses all flights from India as COVID storm cripples the country
- Australia to send 500 ventilators, as well as 1 million surgical masks besides other medical supplies to assist India
- India records 323,144 new cases and 2771 deaths
“The worst has come true,” says Manpreet Kaur, an Indian-Australian in Melbourne as the Australian government announced a ban on flights from COVID-ravaged India till 15 May, leaving many families waiting for reuniting with their loved ones, disappointed.
Melbourne’s Manpreet Kaur has been aching to reunite with her 75-year-old mother, who is currently living alone in their family home in Patiala in India’s northern state of Punjab.
'Will I ever be able to see my mum?'
Ms Kaur’s mother, a permanent resident of Australia, was booked to fly in on a Qantas flight on May 5, which now stands cancelled. This has elevated her stress levels, as she is recovering from Cushing’s disease, a rare medical condition that occurs when the body makes too much cortisol, a hormone related to the body’s stress response.
“When we finally managed to book my mum on a flight to India, she told me, ‘Manpreet, looks like we will reunite soon.’
Manpreet Kaur's 75-year-old mother currently lives alone in India. Source: Supplied by Ms Kaur
But with Australia halting flights from India, it seems seeing her would remain an unfulfilled dream,” says the 54-year-old who is dealing with aggravated levels of stress as her mother remains alone in India, where a devastating second wave of COVID-19 is killing thousands each day.
Australia halts all flights from India:
Prime Minister Scott Morrison Source: AAP
India has been setting new global COVID case records for six consecutive days. The South Asian country has registered 323,144 new cases and 2771 deaths in the past 24 hours.
Announcing a suite of measures after a meeting of the National Security Committee of Cabinet in Canberra, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said all flights from India into Australia have now been suspended.
“We recognise that this has been a very significant outbreak in India,” the prime minister told reporters.
"Today we agreed, in addition to the measures that I announced after the last National Cabinet meeting, to pause direct passenger flights between India and Australia until the 15th of May," he said.
This comes days after National Cabinet agreed to in response to the recent spike in the number of infections amongst returned travellers in hotel quarantine in Northern Territory and Western Australia.
Volunteers from a gurdwara (Sikh place of worship), prepare oxygen cylinders for patients in New Delhi on 24 April. Source: AAP Image/AP Photo/Altaf Qadri
The announcement will directly impact two direct repatriation flights and two passenger flights. Besides these four flights, the fate of eight repatriation flights planned for all of May is also now uncertain.
Mr Morrison said that indirect flights from India, through key transit hubs such as Doha, Dubai, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, have already been halted.
Outward exemptions revoked:
Ms Kaur’s family is amongst thousands torn apart by coronavirus-induced travel restrictions, limiting citizens and permanent residents currently in Australia from travelling to high-risk countries like India, except in
Sydney-based bus operator Raj Sing was scheduled to travel to India on May 1 to tend to his ailing mother. For this purpose, he was granted an outward travel exemption to fly out from the Australian Border Force.
But Mr Singh told SBS Punjabi that his exemption was revoked a day after the government restricted flights to and from India on April 22.
“My mum left for India in March 2020 and has since been hopping from one relative’s house to another as she is sick and cannot live alone. My brother lives in Canada while I’m stuck here,” he said.
On April 23, the 33-year-old Mr Singh received an email from the ABF notifying him that outward travel exemptions for India-bound passengers will no longer be approved except in ‘extremely limited circumstances’.
Snapshot of email received by Raj Singh from ABF. Source: Supplied by Mr Singh
“After I received the email, I applied for a second outward exemption. This time I applied for an exemption to travel to my brother in Canada, but that was outrightly refused. They told me that they doubted my intention to travel to a country other than India,” Mr Singh said.
Humanitarian aid to assist India: 'We will stand by India'
Prime Minister has also announced that the Australian government will be sending critical medical supplies to assist India’s healthcare system buckling under the surge in new infections, which has put pressure on hospital capacity and oxygen supplies across the country.
"[The government will send] 500 non-invasive ventilators, 1 million surgical masks, 500,000 PPE N95 masks, 100,000 surgical gowns, 100,000 goggles, 100,000 pairs of gloves, 20,000 face shields," he said.
"We will commence procurement of 100 oxygen concentrators with tanks and consumables. DFAT will manage the movement of this equipment, over the course of the next week," Mr Morrison added.
Australians stranded in India seek help to return home:
On 26 April, Australia’s High Commissioner to India Barry O’Farrell said there has been an uptick in Australians striving to return home amidst a dramatic rise in new cases and fatalities in India.
“I think the list is still about 8,000, and that's after we've returned a total of 17,000 people since March of last year,” he said.
“So there's a bit of a magic pudding about it, but that's not surprising given that this second wave is not only shocking people around the world, but it's certainly unsettled people in India,” Mr O’Farrell added.
Click on the player above to listen to Manpreet Kaur's interview in Punjabi.
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