The government suspended flights from India as the number of daily infections in that country soared beyond, leaving many Australian citizens stranded.

Among them were a handful of cricketers and cricket commentators whose plights have grabbed most of the headlines but there are many more ordinary citizens who were in India on either business or family visits who can now not get a flight home.

With the Indian Premier League now suspended, Cricket Australia is working on plans to repatriate their people but there are many more Australians who will not get a seat on those flights.

We should all feel great sympathy for them but we should also have some empathy for the impossible position are political leaders find themselves in as they try to balance the welfare of the few against the welfare of the many.

Australia's hotel quarantine system has, overwhelmingly, been a success in keeping COVID-19 numbers under control in this country but it is a finite resource.

And if government and health officials believe allowing thousands of people to enter the country from COVID-ravaged India would quickly overwhelm our quarantine system then there is surely no choice but to stop that happening.

There is a devastating human cost attached to that tough decision but these are exactly the tough decisions our leaders are paid to make.

A new challenge will be the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics in July.

It was announced last week all our competitors will be vaccinated before leaving for Japan. Most of these athletes are young and extremely fit individuals who would not have been eligible for the vaccine until Phase 2b of the rollout which, at the rate we're going, would certainly have come well after the Olympics have been run and won.

The Australian Olympic Committee says vaccinating the Olympians and Paralympians will all be done in-house and create "no load on the public system whatsoever" but there will still be those who see it as one rule for them and another rule for the rest.

Nothing is easy in this COVID world and no two cases are the same. We can just keep doing our best as we keep forging towards that light at the end of the tunnel.

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