NT announces boy, 2, has tested positive for COVID-19 after trip to India

A young child has tested positive for COVID-19 after returning to Australia from coronavirus-ravaged India.

A young child has tested positive for COVID-19 after returning to Australia from coronavirus-ravaged India.

The Northern Territory Government announced in a statement on Sunday the boy, 2, has returned a positive result for the virus after flying in from New Delhi earlier this month.

He is currently in the territory’s quarantine facility at Howard Springs, and has been since his arrival in the country.

“A two-year-old male who arrived on the repatriation flight from New Delhi on 17 April 2021 has tested positive for COVID-19,” the government’s statement said.

“The child is asymptomatic and in the care of the AUSMAT team at the NT Centre for National Resilience.”

The Howard Springs coronavirus quarantine facility on the outskirts of Darwin. Picture: Glenn Campbell

India was last week declared a “high-risk” location as the Australian government slashed arrivals from the subcontinental country in the grips of a devastating outbreak.

India recorded 346,786 new infections on Saturday, setting a world record for the third consecutive day.

It is not yet known if the outbreak is being fuelled by a strain first identified in the country in October known officially as B. 1.616 – but referred to as the “double mutant” strain.

Flights from India to Australia have been slashed by 30 per cent.

Last week Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared Australians will only be permitted to travel to a high-risk country under “very urgent circumstances”.

A priest runs to avoid the heat from the multiple burning funeral pyres of patients who died of the COVID-19 coronavirus disease at a crematorium in New Delhi, India. Picture: Anindito Mukherjee/Getty Images

“An arrangement where 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,” he said.

“This would apply to India.”

A man who returned to Western Australia from India has been identified as the source of an outbreak in Perth, which saw the capital city and Peel region placed into a snap three-day lockdown.

The total number of cases diagnosed in the Northern Territory now stands at 161.

All cases have been linked to international or interstate travel, with no community transmission.