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Nausheen Khatoon has lived in Australia for almost 20 years, yet after making a mercy dash to see her dying father in India the Melbourne nurse is now stranded by the country's coronavirus surge.

"I got four days to spend with him," the mother-of-three told 9News through a video link.

"The last few days, I was there at his bedside holding his hand."

News of the nurse's plight came as Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese described the idea of jailing returning citizens such as her as "extraordinary".

READ MORE: India travel ban on returning Aussies 'violates human rights'

Ms Khatoon is a nurse at the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne and was on the frontline during Victoria's second COVID-19 wave last year.

"All through last year, the COVID period, I have been working in the hospital," she said.

"I have been working through the whole corona period in Melbourne.

"I've worked in the COVID theatres and everything."

Despite her sacrifices during the pandemic in Australia, Ms Khatoon now fears for her health.

"I fear if I fall sick now, I won't be able to reach a doctor or get proper medical help in India now," she said.

Ms Khatoon's extended family in India are American citizens and have been free to return home to the US.

But the Australian government is threatening its citizens with hefty fines of up to $66,000 and even jail time if they try to return home.

"The news, the statements given by the Prime Minister, everything contradicted my statement explaining how great my country Australia is," Ms Khatoon said.

READ MORE: The world is in the midst of its worst coronavirus outbreak yet

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese today weighed in on Ms Khatoon's plight.

"The idea that we would put her in jail upon her return to Australia is quite extraordinary," Mr Albanese said.

He questioned why similar measures had not been applied to other countries.

"Australia has obligations to our citizens, to people who are Australians — not just to abandon them overseas, but then to threaten them is quite extraordinary action," he said, according to Nine newspapers.

"The government's got to justify how it is that the figures from India are similar to what they've been in the past from the UK and the US, but we haven't seen these sort of measures."

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has confirmed a temporary pause on travellers will come into effect on Monday.

The penalties are being invoked under the Biosecurity Act to stop people coming to Australia from India via other countries such as Singapore or the United Arab Emirates.

The act empowers Mr Hunt to do whatever is necessary to stop the spread of a listed disease.

Mr Hunt said the new measures were due to an "unmanageable" number of arrivals from the country who had tested positive to COVID-19.

9News understands once hotel quarantine places are freed up in two weeks' time the government will consider evacuation flights.

Mr Hunt has said Australians left stranded in India by the federal government's flight ban are a "top priority".

Western Australians have avoided what would be their second COVID-19 lockdown in a fortnight for another day, Premier Mark McGowan has announced, with no new community cases detected today.

However, health authorities are no closer to determining how the original case – a hotel quarantine worker at the Pan Pacific Hotel, named case 1001 – contracted the virus from returned travellers.

Premier Mark McGowan's announcement will bring relief to many, but he is still refusing to rule out a lockdown in the days to come, with new exposure sites revealed and some restrictions increased.

READ MORE: Coronavirus breaks out of Perth hotel quarantine with three new cases

Fans will not be allowed to attend today's AFL Western Derby at Optus Stadium.

A huge crowd of 45,000 people had been expected to pack into the stadium for one of Perth's largest sporting events.

Nightclubs will also be forced to close immediately.

Despite no new cases being detected today, Mr McGowan is refusing to rule out a stricter lockdown in the days ahead.

"I want to avoid going into lockdown again – I know how much it can impact people's lives and businesses – but if we need to go back into lockdown we will," he said.

He said the restrictions still in place as a result of the recent outbreak connected to the Mecure Hotel, including the requirement to wear masks, had lowered a lot of the risks for community transmission.

The fresh outbreak stems from a quarantine security guard who worked at the Pan Pacific Hotel in Perth last weekend, with two of his household contacts also testing positive yesterday.

They have now been revealed as food delivery drivers, with Mr McGowan saying they could have been infectious since last Tuesday and worked a number of shifts since then.

WA contact tracers are contacting all the restaurants they visited and locations where they delivered food to direct people to isolate and test for COVID-19.

"Public health advice is that the risk is low when it comes to food deliveries, given the minimal contact and the requirement to wear masks," Mr McGowan said.

Any restaurants determined to be an exposure site will be listed on the WA Health website, but this may not include all locations visited by the pair due to the short length of their visits.

One of the positive cases also attended cooking classes at the Perth College of Business and Technology last Tuesday and Wednesday.

The roughly 20 attendees at each class are being contacted by WA Health and directed into quarantine.

The hotel quarantine worker, aged in his 20s, is believed to have been infectious in the community for four days, during which time he visited a number of locations including a shopping centre and a Coles.

It's believed he contracted the virus from two positive travellers quarantining on the same floor he was guarding.

Authorities have reviewed CCTV footage of the floor at the Pan Pacific Hotel where the man was working but been unable to find any potential exposure source, McGowan said.

"Mask wearing was appropriate by the guard in question and there was nothing else that occurred in the area that was unusual," the premier said.

"What you have seen in other states is exactly the same thing occur: people wear masks and everything is done appropriately and somehow people get infected.

"It just goes to show that sometimes some things appear to be inexplicable."

Other restrictions had already been stepped up yesterday, just one day after they were eased following the previous three-day lockdown which ended last Monday.

Masks are again mandatory outdoors as well as in indoor public spaces and on public transport.

Cafes and restaurants will return to "pretty much business as usual" but hospitality venues must comply with either the two-square-metre rule or 75 per cent capacity.

The latest outbreak has prompted New Zealand's Ministry of Health to pause the trans-Tasman travel bubble with Western Australia.

Scheduled flights between WA and New Zealand have been cancelled, including a flight from Perth which had been due to land in Auckland at 5.50am on Sunday morning.

The NZ government is also advising anyone who has arrived into the country from the WA capital in the last four days to check the exposure sites and self-isolate immediately if exposed.

Other Australian states have yet to increase travel restrictions with their western neighbour, but extra protocols are being put in place.

In New South Wales, Perth arrivals are being screened by dedicated health teams after disembarking at Sydney Airport and all travellers are required to complete an entry declaration if they've been in WA within the 14 days prior to entering NSW.

Victoria has added the Perth exposure sites – which include a shopping centre and Coles – as 'Tier One' exposure sites, with anyone who has visited the locations at the relevant times being sent into an immediate 14-day quarantine.

Perth and Peel remain 'orange' zones under Victoria's traffic light border restrictions, meaning travellers must apply for an exemption before being permitted to enter the state.

South Australia is directing recent Perth arrivals to self-quarantine if they visited any of the exposure sites and to complete documentation to notify SA Health.

Hotel quarantine worker exposure sites

• Mirrabooka: Mirrabooka Mosque: Masjid Al Taqwa on 30/04 between 1:15pm – 2:00pm
• Balcatta: Coles – Prime West Northlands Shopping Centre on 29/04 between 4:30pm – 5:15pm
• Joondanna: Agha Juice Cafe on 28/04 between 6:50pm – 8:00pm
• Balcatta: Smokemart – Prime West Northlands Shopping Centre on 28/04 between 1:30pm – 3:15pm
• Balcatta: Northlands Fresh – Prime West Northlands Shopping Centre on 28/04 between 1:30pm – 3.15pm
• Stirling: Spudshed on 28/04 between 1:30am – 2:30am
• Victoria Park: Swan Taxi Victoria Park on 27/04 between 1:50pm – 2:45pm

SpaceX has safely returned four astronauts from the International Space Station, making the first US crew splashdown in darkness since the Apollo 8 moonshot.

The Dragon capsule parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Panama City, Florida, just before 3am, ending the second astronaut flight for Elon Musk's company.

It was an express trip home, lasting just six and-a-half hours.

The astronauts, three American and one Japanese, flew back in the same capsule – named Resilience – in which they launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in November.

"We welcome you back to planet Earth and thanks for flying SpaceX," SpaceX's Mission Control radioed moments after splashdown.

"For those of you enrolled in our frequent flyer program, you've earned 68 million miles on this voyage."

"We'll take those miles," said spacecraft commander Mike Hopkins. "Are they transferrable?" SpaceX replied that the astronauts would have to check with the company's marketing department.

Within a half-hour of splashdown, the charred capsule – resembling a giant toasted marshmallow – had been hoisted onto the recovery ship, which was equipped with bright spotlights.

The 167-day mission was the longest for a crew capsule launching from the U.S. The previous record of 84 days was set by NASA's final Skylab station astronauts in 1974.

Saturday night's undocking left seven people at the space station, four of whom arrived a week ago via SpaceX.

"Earthbound!" NASA astronaut Victor Glover, the capsule's pilot, tweeted after departing the station.

"One step closer to family and home!"

Hopkins and Glover – along with NASA's Shannon Walker and Japan's Soichi Noguchi – should have returned to Earth last Wednesday, but high offshore winds forced SpaceX to pass up a pair of daytime landing attempts.

Managers switched to a rare splashdown in darkness, to take advantage of calm weather.

SpaceX had practiced for a night-time return, just in case, and even recovered its most recent station cargo capsule from the Gulf of Mexico in darkness.

Infrared cameras tracked the capsule as it re-entered the atmosphere; it resembled a bright star streaking through the night sky.

All four main parachutes could be seen deploying just before splashdown, which was also visible in the infrared.

Apollo 8 – NASA's first flight to the moon with astronauts – ended with a predawn splashdown in the Pacific near Hawaii on December 27, 1968.

Eight years later, a Soviet capsule with two cosmonauts ended up in a dark, partially frozen lake in Kazakhstan, blown off course in a blizzard.

That was it for night-time crew splashdowns – until Sunday.

Despite the early hour, the Coast Guard was out in full force to enforce an 11-mile (18-kilometer) keep-out zone around the bobbing Dragon capsule. For SpaceX's first crew return in August, pleasure boaters swarmed the capsule, a safety risk.

Once out of the capsule, the astronauts planned to hop on a helicopter for the short flight to shore, then catch a plane straight to Houston for a reunion with their families.

Their capsule, Resilience, will head back to Cape Canaveral for refurbishment for SpaceX's first private crew mission in September.

The space station docking mechanism will be removed, and a brand new domed window put in its place.

A tech billionaire has purchased the entire three-day flight, which will orbit 120 kilometers above the space station.

He'll fly with a pair of contest winners and a physician assistant from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, his designated charity for the mission.

SpaceX's next astronaut launch for NASA will follow in October.

NASA turned to private companies to service the space station, after the shuttle fleet retired in 2011.

SpaceX began supply runs in 2012 and, last May, launched its first crew, ending NASA's reliance on Russia for astronaut transport.

By Tom Kitchen for RNZ A Hawke’s Bay man is calling for an offensive number plate to be removed from circulation after he found one on his new car.Earlier this year, James Crow and his family needed a new plate for a recently…

The wife of former AFL player Sam Newman has died suddenly at their Melbourne home.

Amanda Brown was found by Newman laying unresponsive on the floor of their Docklands apartment at about 8pm yesterday, the Herald Sun reported. She was 50.

A report will be prepared for the coroner and Ms Brown's death is not being treated as suspicious.

READ MORE: Former Geelong Cats president Frank Costa dies at 83 after battle with cancer

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The former Footy Show host told the paper he was "devastated" by the loss.

The couple had been together for 20 years before marrying in November last year.

Newman played 300 games for the Geelong Football Club between 1964 and 1980.