Australia govt ”must avert new India repatriation flight fiasco” – MENAFN.COM

Australia govt ”must avert new India repatriation flight fiasco” – MENAFN.COM

(MENAFN - Gulf Times) The Australian government needs to do more to avoid a repeat of the scores of seats left empty on the first post-ban repatriation flight from virus-ravaged India, one community leader has said. Eighty Australians touched down in Darwin yesterday morning and were moved to the Howard Springs quarantine facility on the city's outskirts. But about 70 seats reserved for returning Australians were empty after 40 people tested positive before the flight from Delhi, with another 30 identified as close contacts. Dr Yadu Singh, the president of the Federation of Indian Associations of New South Wales and the head of the Council of Indian Federations of Australia, said: ''They need to think about a different mechanism so as not to waste those seats." Total cases of Covid-19 have topped 24mn in India, with the country's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, saying the country was ''on a war footing" as more than 4, 000 people died from the virus for a third straight day. India is experiencing a spread of cases associated with the B. 1. 617 variant, which some experts say could be more transmissible than other variants. The World Health Organisation this week declared it a ''variant