In Australia's second major coronavirus-related action in less than a week, passenger flights to and from Covid-smashed India are to be suspended amid a rampant and deadly coronavirus surge in the populous South Asian nation.
Australia will also provide India with an initial package of ventilators, surgical masks, goggles, face shields, surgical gowns, gloves and oxygen supplies.
The federal cabinet's national security committee on Tuesday decided that direct passenger flights between Australia and India will be paused until May 15.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the temporary flight ban may be extended beyond that date, telling reporters in Sydney "it will be reviewed prior to that time".
He said the decision was based on medical advice while taking into account humanitarian concerns. There are more than 9000 Australians and thousands of permanent residents stranded in India.
India's health system is nothing short of overwhelmed as it faces a skyrocketing wave of a "double mutant" variant of COVID-19 known as B.1.617, reporting on Tuesday about 323,000 new coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours and almost 3000 deaths.
The official figures were slightly down on what was recorded the previous day, but were still extraordinary. Unofficially, it is feared the real figures are much higher, perhaps five times as high.
India's people are literally gasping for breath. Hospitals desperately need beds and medical supplies and equipment such as oxygen, drugs and ventilators.
Australia has also experienced a spike in the number of returned travellers from India testing positive to COVID-19 in quarantine. One such traveller, who stayed at the Perth Mercure Hotel quarantine facility, led to the just-ended snap three-day Perth and Peel region lockdown in Western Australia.
Another man caught the virus at the hotel and tested positive in Melbourne almost a week after leaving.
No new community cases of COVID-19 were recorded in WA on Tuesday, but there are four new cases in hotel quarantine. All had recently returned from India.
Last week, federal, state and territory leaders, meeting as the national cabinet, agreed to slash passenger numbers on flights from India by 30 per cent and restrict exemptions that allowed people to leave Australia to travel to high-risk countries.
West Australian Premier Mark McGowan, who enacted the debilitating snap lockdown, supports a suspension on flights to and from India because they are too risky.
"We are in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, India is the epicentre of death and destruction as we speak. And I don't think there is any need to go to India, I don't," he told reporters in Perth.
"Maybe I am unusual, maybe I am out of step. But I think it's just common sense that you don't leave Australia, which is essentially COVID-ree, and go to a country full of Covid and then get sick and want to come home. I don't see the sense in it."
