Amid the concerns of transmission of new Omicron variant of Covid-19, the Australian police on Thursday arrested three people for breaking the quarantine in the middle of the night.
The police said that the three accused had scaled a fence to break out of the Howard Springs Centre, the quarantine facility which is considered as the Northern Territory’s one of the main quarantine facility for people returning to Australia.
The police officials said that all the three people were tested negative for Covid 19, a day before they tried to escape from the quarantine. We had to conduct a manhunt to arrest them, the police had said.
Various checkpoints were set up around the quarantine facility and inspected cars had to move throughout the area in search of the three escapees, the police further said. The police did not revealed if the escapees were local residents or international travelers.
However, this is not the first time that people are trying to break the quarantine. Recently a 27-year-old man had jumped from the facility’s fences and had tried to fled, until the police had arrested him.
Meanwhile, the country had already confirmed six cases of Omicron variant, with most of them being the international travelers returning to the country.
The country had also decided to postpone the opening of its international borders for the skilled workers and students, at least two weeks for now.
The omicron variant of the coronavirus, which was first detected in South Africa, is considered highly infectious and capable of sustaining frequent mutations. World Health Organization (WHO) has already declared omicron as the ‘variant of concern’.
