NRI Affairs Correspondent
The Australian national cabinet has agreed to reduce the number of flights from India after an alarming surge in the number of COVID cases in the country. The restrictions will come into effect later this week as the Australian officials have declared the nation as ‘high-risk’.
India is witnessing a second wave of COVID-19 infections, which is far worse than the first wave last year. In the previous 24 hours, India recorded the highest global daily increase of new Covid-19 cases.
The restrictions on travel from India will also impact the people wanting to travel to India as it will become harder to get travel exemptions.
“As time goes on, and the pandemic continues to rage, there are countries that are frankly of greater risk than others,” Mr Morrison told reporters in Canberra on Thursday after a national cabinet meeting.
“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.”
India recorded 314,835 cases on Thursday- the highest global daily – surpassing the previous record of 297,430 held by the US.
The country has so far registered 15.93 million cases since the pandemic began. More than 184,000 lives have been lost to the pandemic.