Health Minister Natasha Fyles has confirmed a new case of COVID-19, with a man who came from a Melbourne hotspot testing positive in quarantine in Darwin.
The minister fronted a press conference Thursday morning with the news of the first person to test positive in the Northern Territory in 87 days.
She said the man in his 30s who lives in Territory, flew from Pakistan to Melbourne and went into quarantine. Ms Fyles said he then spent time with his family in a hotspot area of Melbourne before he returned to Darwin via Brisbane on Monday and went into quarantine before testing positive on Wednesday night.
“People will be anxious hearing this, but can I assure Territorians that this individual followed all the precautions,” she told the press conference.
“This is a returned traveller and all the precautions have been followed so there is a very low risk to the community.”
The man is now in Royal Darwin Hospital and Ms Fyles said contact tracing had begun.
“We will be getting in touch with some of those on the Brisbane-to-Darwin flight as we look into this,” she said.
The flight was later identified as Qantas flight QF610, which travelled from Melbourne to Brisbane on June 29, and Qantas flight QF836 from Brisbane to Darwin on the same day.
NT chief health officer Hugh Heggie said the risks were “relatively low” for passengers.
The NT borders will still open to people from other parts of Australian on July 17, but people who come from local areas with COVID-19 infection hotspots will have to quarantine in the NT at their own cost for 14 days on arrival.
It has been more than 40 days since an Australian Defence Force member – who tested positive in the Middle East, with three other members and was flown to Darwin – was the last person in the Territory to recover from coronavirus, testing negative on May 21.
The previous case before the Defence group was a woman who tested positive on April 6, who the government said had been in self-quarantine after returning home on Qantas flight from Sydney to Darwin on March 28.
The government said the man in his 30s from Melbourne had been complying by quarantine rules by staying at his home where he lives alone.
The government also said all 31 cases of COVID-19 in the Northern Territory were related to international or interstate travel with no confirmed cases of community transmission.
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Once again Andrews fucked it. Gave these ignorant bastards plenty of notice of the big hint. They had time to take the hint, and bolt. This is what they’ve done. The virus, when it springs up all over the place, you can dump it all on Mao Tse Dan’s doorstep.