Incoming Flights from India restricted by 30% due to High Risk

Prime Minister Scott Morrison today announced that flights from India would be reduced by 30% over the coming months, starting this week, due to India being an extremely high risk country which has now hit over 300,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in a single day, today.

This is what Mr. Morrison had to say after today’s National Cabinet meeting.

We also considered today another emerging and important issue and that is dealing with returning Australian residents and citizens from high-risk countries. Now, as time goes on and the pandemic continues to rage, there are countries that are frankly of greater risk than others. And we’ve seen in particular most recently an increase in the rate of cases in our quarantine system at a state and territory level for arrivals from India. What we have agreed to do, and this particularly relates to the chartered services we’re running into the Northern Territory, we will be reducing by some 30 per cent the numbers coming through our chartered services in the months ahead. We will also be limiting the departure exceptions for Australians travelling to high-risk countries and the one we’re nominating at the moment and there will be others and we’ll be working through that over the course of the next week to India. So those who may have been going for, sadly family events such as weddings or sadly funerals, these were things that were restricted in Australia for Australians in this country. So regrettably, there are some exemptions that are provided in these circumstances and we’ll be instructing the Border Force to ensure that only in very urgent circumstances would an exemption be permitted for someone to travel to a high-risk country. To give you an idea about high-risk countries, the United Kingdom, who allows people to enter have got a list of red list countries that only residents, sorry, only citizens can return from. While we’re not adopting that list, that gives you somewhat of an idea of the type of approach we’ll be seeking to put in place from those high-risk countries and the Chief Medical Officer working with others and DFAT will be seeking to put a list of high-risk countries in place.

We will also be reducing by 30 per cent over the course of this week and we’ll be advising that on a later date, just to flag, the reduction in volumes in direct flights from India into Australia. There are only direct flights into Sydney. So that would be a 30 per cent reduction and we will announce once we’re in a position to do so, which shouldn’t be before too long, to advise when that will take effect from. We will also be looking to put in place for high-risk countries and we’ll work through that over the course of this week coming. An arrangement whereby if you have been in a high-risk country in the previous 14 days before getting on your last point of embarkation to Australia, then you would need to have had a PCR test 72 hours before leaving that last point of embarkation. So, if you had been, this would apply to India. If you had been in India when you had arrived in say, Kuala Lumpur or Doha or Singapore or some place like that, in those countries and we have to work through the arrangements with officials and others before we put this in place but in the interests of transparency, what we’re saying in that last point of embarkation which would be Doha or Singapore or Kuala Lumpur, you would need to have had a PCR test 72 hours before getting on that plane. That deals with the problem, I should say the issue, that is being addressed in places like South Australia and Western Australia, to a lesser extent Victoria and Queensland, where they don’t have direct flights. No what this will do is ensure that in those places, that those seats would then be taken up by other Australian residents and citizens seeking to return who won’t be coming from high-risk countries. These are difficult decisions we’ve had to make but the increasing risk that we’ve seen from some countries, we believe necessitates managing that risk in the best way possible. But also maintaining the volumes of those who can come under the cap arrangements we currently have.