Covid outbreak Northern Territory: Three-year-old baby tests positive to coronavirus

A three-week-old baby girl has become infected with Covid in the Northern Territory, as concern mounts around exposure sites in Indigenous communities. 

She is one of the eight new infections recorded in the NT on Wednesday, with the remote town of Katherine in lockdown over the shock outbreak.

The cluster, which is the worst seen in the NT since the pandemic began, has now reached a total of 19 cases. 

Chief Minister Michael Gunner said the situation is ‘serious’ and said all new infections were Aboriginal people. 

Five of the new cases are from the remote community of Robinson River, including a 13-year-old and the baby. 

All of these cases have been flown to Darwin to stay in the Howard Springs quarantine facility. 

In the town of Katherine there were three new cases: a 36-year-old man, a 38-year-old woman and a 21-year-old woman.  

All those cases were household contacts of previous cases and have been taken to the Centre for National Resilience in Darwin. 

However, it is feared they may have been infectious while in the community. 

Vaccination rates in the Katherine region are below the NT average.

Mr Gunner said contact tracing had been made more difficult due to some people who hand-wrote check-in writing illegibly. 

He asked people to keep their writing legible. ‘Instead of using our time to get in contact with close contacts and organising testing, contact tracers have to use that time to go through CCTV to identify everyone.’ 

Mr Gunner said he feared people would die from Covid-19 in the NT. 

‘Please, please don’t let it be your life. The vaccine is the best defence with ample supply,’ he said.

Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner (pictured) fears people will die from Covid-19 in the Territory and urged people to get vaccinated

‘We know how quickly Delta can spread within households, and we cannot be sure yet that it has not spread further into the Robinson River and Katherine communities, or wider in the Territory.’

Anyone who attended Robinson River since November 11 and Katherine since November 7, must now isolate until a negative result is received, regardless of having Covid symptoms or not.      

The list of exposure sites in the Territory is growing, with Katherine District Hospital’s emergency department listed five times over four days, on November 11, 12, 13 and 15.

Wurli Wirlinjang Health Service’s main clinic has also been listed as a close contact exposure site for Monday between 10am and 11.45am.