Justina Blacksmith and her one-year-old daughter Nyeisha were the first in their household to fall sick with COVID-19 early this month.
Then her uncle and the other five adults living in their small three-bedroom house tested positive.
By day six of their isolation period, all four children had symptoms and their week of quarantine turned into two.
"It was very hard with 11 people in the house," Ms Blacksmith said.
In the remote Indigenous community of Binjari, 15 kilometres outside Katherine, the toll of COVID-19 is being felt in the small homes that sometimes house as many as 15 people.
Amid Omicron outbreaks, the Australian Medical Association's Northern Territory branch is calling on the NT government to declare a Code Brown alert for every public hospital.
All three of the COVID-related deaths announced on Wednesday – a new daily record – involved people from remote communities.
Yesterday, the federal government extended biosecurity zone measures in a number of remote communities across the NT.
Binjari Community Aboriginal Corporation chief executive Deb Aloisi said residents who tested positive were no longer being taken to the Howard Springs quarantine facility.
Instead, she said they were being forced to isolate together in cramped conditions.
Across the road from Ms Blacksmith's house, Cecilia Maroney spent two weeks confined to her home, sleeping in her living room with no air conditioning as temperatures soared past 35 degrees.
At first, five people living in the house tested positive to COVID, but as the days crept on other family members fell ill too, sending everyone into a second week of isolation.
Ms Maroney said it wasn't the heat nor being in a small house with too many people that was the most difficult part of isolating; it was making her children understand the dangers of leaving the house and potentially spreading the virus throughout the community further.
COVID hitting communities hard
Lisa Mumbin is among a groundswell of Indigenous leaders and residents in the remote communities surrounding Katherine who say it's vital to have a supported isolation site for COVID-positive people that is also close to home.
The elder and chair of the Jawoyn Association says COVID is "hitting communities hard".
In Barunga, a community about 80km south-east of Katherine, almost half of the population was isolating, Ms Mumbin said.
In nearby Beswick, the situation was no different, she said.
Late last month the Aboriginal Peak Organisations Northern Territory (APO NT) called for urgent action from the Commonwealth and cited concern over a "looming food security crisis".
APO NT spokesman John Paterson said the health system was facing critical transport and isolation capacity shortfalls, "meaning that infected people are not removed into isolation rapidly or are being left to isolate in overcrowded and inadequate accommodation".
Despite this, the NT government says "care is being provided as close to home as possible".
A spokeswoman for NT Health said priority was given to testing symptomatic people and vulnerable close contacts when there was widespread transmission in a remote community.
"Positive cases are assessed to identify those who may require additional care," she said.
"Transport is coordinated if acute care or alterative accommodation is required."
Ms Aloisi said the impacts of COVID had underscored the crisis in housing inequality that, even before the pandemic, was the region's most pressing issue.
"We've got a lady (in Binjari) that's living in a two-bedroom house and I think she must have 20 people in there. Now, they're here visiting, but it's not like they don't visit for a week, they're here for months and months and months."
Ms Aloisi said she would like to see a replica of the Howard Springs facility in Darwin built at a smaller scale closer to remote communities.
"We've got to live with COVID.
"We've had it happen twice now that a house has gone down for seven days because there has been a positive case, and just coming out of the seven days, they've tested and another person's gone positive, so that [household has to isolate] for another seven days.
"If that positive person was taken out in the first instance and put into quarantine, then the [other household members] may not have tested positive."
The Northern Land Council said it was not aware of any detailed or properly considered proposal to the NT government to establish isolation centres in the NLC area, but it backed local efforts to tackle COVID-19.
NLC chairman Samuel Bush-Blanasi said traditional owners were continuing to push for local isolation centres in communities, and asked the NT government to step up and help establish the facilities.
Cases peak in the communities
Anne Marie Lee, a community leader in Barunga, said remote communities had been left in the lurch after peak Aboriginal health bodies warned last year the NT's borders were opening too soon.
While vaccination rates in her community reached almost 100 per cent, Ms Lee said residents were living in fear as they were left wondering if their house would be locked down next.
"We have no support. Nothing whatsoever. I'm angry because there is no place for us to get family members to isolate instead of in the houses."
Ms Lee said some residents in Beswick had even resorted to sleeping in tents to protect their family from getting COVID.
