* Direct flights from India to Sydney and Darwin will be paused until May 15.

* Indirect flights from India to Doha, Dubai, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur and on to Australia have also been suspended until the same date.

* The Morrison government will review the decision before May 15 but the next phase of flights will focus on getting "vulnerable Australians" home from India.

* Passengers on all future flights from India will need to return negative tests before getting on planes.

* The decision was made because of the increase in the percentage of cases in quarantine that had their origin in India.

* People returning from India represented 95 per cent of COVID-19 cases in quarantine in the NT in recent weeks.

* While the number of positive cases has hovered around 90 a week in quarantine, the figure went to 143 in the past week.

* The pause will enable quarantine facilities to "work through the system and return to lower levels so we will be able to resume getting Australians home", the prime minister says.

* So far 20,000 people have returned from India to Australia.

* The prime minister is standing by the hotel quarantine system, saying it had recorded a 99.99 per cent success rate while processing 140,000 people.

Australian Associated Press