The Northern Territory is likely to find out if a COVID-19 infected American man who travelled from a Sydney quarantine hotel to Darwin has infected others.

August 18, 2021

Northern Territory authorities are expected to learn if a COVID-19 infected US man who travelled from Sydney to the Top End has spread the virus to others.

Contact tracers on Tuesday identified 99 close and about 300 casual contacts after the man in his 30s flew via Canberra to Darwin on Thursday.

He spent three days in Darwin and drove 300km south to Katherine on Sunday for work before a COVID-19 test revealed he was infected.

No new cases had been identified late on Tuesday as health workers ramped up testing and ordered contacts to quarantine.

Chief Minister Michael Gunner warned the public that many of the close contacts’ test results were pending and it was too early to relax.

“We are not out of the woods. We are now in a waiting game,” he told reporters.

“We are not going to have a better picture of how we are going until late tonight at the earliest, but more likely tomorrow (Wednesday) morning.”

About 150,000 people in Greater Darwin and Katherine were plunged into a three-day lockdown at midday on Monday.

The infected man arrived at Darwin Airport on a Qantas flight just before midnight on Thursday and travelled to the Hilton Hotel by taxi.

He returned a positive result on Sunday after mandatory testing at Royal Darwin Hospital.

He’d earlier returned a negative test on August 10 during his stay in the Sydney quarantine hotel.

The man has been moved to the National Centre for Resilience quarantine facility, where re-testing showed he had become more infectious than he was on Sunday.

“That means we detected the infection early. It also means he was more infectious in Katherine than he was in Darwin,” Mr Gunner said.

More than a dozen public exposure sites have been identified, including Smith Street Mall in Darwin and the Woolworths in Katherine, where the man visited with a friend.

That person has since returned a negative COVID result and has also been moved to Howard Springs.

There were 32 people on the man’s flight to Darwin. Six have since travelled interstate and the others are isolating in the NT, along with 11 close contacts from the Hilton Hotel.

The taxi driver and an Uber driver, who took the man to collect a hire car on Friday, are also considered close contacts but have returned negative tests.

Other exposure sites listed include Outback Steaks and Curry in Darwin and Knotts Crossing Resort in Katherine.

Three people who were at the steak house when the infected man was present have since travelled to WA.

Another 12 are isolating in Darwin, along with 18 other people from Salvatore’s Cafe, a mini-mart and the hospital.

More than a dozen people who were potentially exposed to the virus at the resort have been identified, with 11 isolating and two interstate.

Authorities don’t yet know how the man contracted COVID-19 and they are treating it as the Delta variant.