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The Canberra Times
The Canberra Times
National
Cassandra Morgan

Canberra's fifth repatriation flight set to touch down on Monday

Canberra's fifth repatriation flight will touch down in the city on Monday evening.

An ACT government spokeswoman said the flight, from Singapore, would carry between 150 and 180 returning Australian overseas travellers.

The spokeswoman said the flight would likely be a "hub flight", meaning passengers on it would have travelled from a number of different locations.

She said exact passenger numbers and information about where they had travelled would be specified once the ACT received a finalised flight manifest on Monday.

The flight was set to touch down in Canberra at 7.45pm on Monday.

The spokeswoman said the ACT government had reviewed its processes from the city's most recent repatriation flight, from Chennai in India, and was happy with how everything went.

"[The ACT government is] confident in our quarantine arrangements and safeguards going into this next flight," the spokeswoman said.

Passengers on the flight from Chennai in India were on Tuesday released into the community after they underwent a mandatory 14 days in hotel quarantine.

Among the travellers was a woman in her 30s who returned a "very low" positive COVID-19 test during her exit testing from quarantine.

The woman later underwent additional testing and authorities confirmed she posed no risk to the community.

They earlier said they were confident the woman tested positive because of an old coronavirus infection she sustained while she was still overseas in December.

Monday's repatriation flight passengers will complete 14 days of hotel quarantine at Pacific Suites on Northbourne Avenue, which is currently the only place where hotel quarantine can happen in Canberra.

ACT Minister for Health Rachel Stephen-Smith on Friday said the territory had agreed it could take on more repatriation flights in 2021.

"We've said to the Commonwealth that we are very happy to continue to take repatriation or government-facilitated flights," she said.

"We can only take one at a time but if that timing works, we're happy to continue to take those certainly for the first half of this year and probably for the rest of the year as well."

Ms Stephen-Smith said the ACT government had budgeted for six flights in the first half of 2021, but it would continue to work with the federal government to determine whether it needed to take more throughout the year.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content:

Flight QF117 from Chennai to Canberra landing at Canberra Airport on February 8. Picture: Dion Georgopoulos
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