April 26
Monday.
Perth came out of its snap lockdown with no new community cases reported that day.
Mandatory mask wearing would remain until at least 1 minute past midnight on Saturday morning.
Retaurants, pubs and cafes could re-open but indoor gyms, nightclubs and casinos would remain shut.
“The short three-day lockdown has done the job it was designed to do. It was the circuit-breaker we needed to limit community spread. Western Australians have done their bit to keep our community safe,” Premier Mark McGowan said.
April 27
On the larger scale the Australian government made a decision to stop all direct flights returning from India India due to the higher number of COVID cases from returned travellers in hotel quarantine in particular from India.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said all indirect flights through other cities like Doha, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur had been paused by their respective governments.
It followed a reduction in repatriations and travellers going through hotel quarantines due to increased case numbers in said quarantine.
Travel to India was also retricted to matters of national interest, under medical exemption and for COVID-19 purposes.
On the 24th of April the number of positive cases at the Howard Springs facility in the Northern Territory had reached 48.
“The Northern Territory only has a certain amount of ICU beds,” the Northern Territory Deputy Opposition Leader Gerard Maley had said.
As of that Saturday, a total of 6,668 people have arrived in Darwin on repatriation flights since October last year, of which 117 have tested positive to COVID-19.
The Prime Minister said the total number of weekly cases in hotel quarantine had risen from 90 to 143.
The pause would last until May 15.
It was reported 9,000 Australians in India wanted to return home with 650 of them categorised as vulnerable.
“We don’t think the answer is to just forsake those in India and just shut them off. I don’t see this as a problem we have to solve, I see this as a group of people we need to help. These are Australians and Australian residents who need our help,“ Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.
The Australian government was also sending 500 ventilators, 1 million surgical masks, 500,000 P2 and N95 masks, 100,000 goggles, 100,000 pairs of gloves and 20,000 face shields.
On the 27th of April, the World Health Organisation reported there had been 17,636,307 confirmed cases with a daily increae of 323,144. There had been 197,894 deaths with a daily increase of 2,771.
“I stress this is an initial package, there’ll be more to follow,” the Prime Minister advised about the aid being sent.
The European Union decided to sue AstraZeneca for breach of contract after they failed to deliver 30,000,000 dozes of their COVID vaccine by the end of June. The pharmaceutical company was only going to be able to deliver a third of that amount.
The U.S. government planned to send 60 million doses of AstraZeneca overseas to where it is needed if the move gets approval from the Food and Drugs Administration.
-Lloyd Marken
Back to the Drawing Board Productions 
Excellent stuff, Lloyd. One day this will be your first best seller!
As far as I know, the British government has shown similar generosity to India as the Australians have done. Don’t forget, though, that India has a space programme and a huge air force.of cutting edge standards Why don’t they spend all those billions on their own citizens?
Thank you John for the kind words. You bring up a good point of how badly some of the Indian government’s decisions now look bad in hindsight given what has transpired. A lot to unpack there for sure.
After allowing travel to Portugal, the government did a turnaround yesterday, and put it back on the ‘no-travel’ list. That undoubtedly left a lot of people with a holiday booking they may not be able to use, as well as others returning to the UK facing a period of isolation or quarantine. It is still too early to let anyone travel abroad if they are going to change the rules every day.
Yesterday, 11 Covid deaths were notified in England, and there was a significant spike in cases of the Indian variant. But Boris is still set on opening up everything on the 21st.
Best wishes, Pete.
Surely they should consider delaying that, some restrictions have been lowered, lets see how we go with that given the Indian variant has arrived in the UK. Travel abroad has been more curtailed here, we had hotel quarantine almost a year before you did. The talk here is how poorly the vaccination roll-out is going. Best wishes Pete.