Kanye West has been told he will be barred from entering Australia due to his vaccination status if he attempts to take his tour Down Under next year.
The US rapper, 44, wants to perform several stadium shows to promote his Donda album in the country in March, reported News.com.au – but it is believed the 21-time Grammy winning artist has only had one dose of the Covid vaccine.
Under Australian law, anyone entering the country must be fully jabbed against the virus.
It comes after unvaccinated tennis ace Novak Djokovic was deported from Melbourne on the eve of the Australian Open two weeks ago, following an 11-day legal battle with the government.
Speaking at a press conference Saturday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison referenced the saga with the Serbian as he insisted celebrities are not exempt from following the country’s strict Covid protocols.
‘The rules are you have to be fully vaccinated,’ he said. ‘Those are the rules. They apply to everybody, as people have seen most recently.
‘It doesn’t matter who you are, they are the rules. Follow the rules, you can come. You don’t follow the rules, you can’t.’
Kanye West (pictured) has been told he will be barred from entering Australia due to his vaccination status if he attempts to take his tour Down Under next year.
It comes after unvaccinated tennis ace Novak Djokovic was deported from Melbourne on the eve of the Australian Open – following an 11-day legal battle – two weeks ago. (Pictured: Djokovic made honorary citizen in city of Budva, January 28, 2022)
Kanye is rumoured to be bringing his Donda tour Down Under in the near future, but his vaccination status will likely see him barred from Australia
Kanye received his first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, before changing his mind and opting not to get a second dose.
‘I travelled to Paris a couple weeks ago, and I had to go through Lisbon because you can go through Lisbon without being vaccinated,’ he told the Drink Champs podcast last year.
‘I only got one of the shots, so I’m half-vaccinated,’ he added.
Back in 2020, West also spread conspiracy theories about the vaccine, calling it ‘the mark of the beast’ and claiming that it was a plot to put microchips in people.
‘When they say the way we’re going to fix Covid is with a vaccine, I’m extremely cautious. That’s the mark of the beast,’ he told Forbes at the time.
‘They want to put chips inside of us, they want to do all kinds of things, to make it where we can’t cross the gates of heaven.’
Health experts say that vaccines are safe and effective and that side effects are rare and there is no evidence that they contain microchips.
But West’s comments could come back to bite him if he plans to enter Australia any time soon.
When cancelling Djokovic’s Australian visa earlier this month, Immigration Minister Alex Hawke admitted that one of the reasons was to prevent him from inciting any ‘anti-vax sentiment’ among the Australian public.
‘[Novak’s] presence in Australia, given his well-known stance on vaccination, creates a risk of strengthening the antivaccination sentiment of a minority of the Australian community,’ Hawke wrote.
Djokovic, who’d told officials he was not vaccinated against Covid, believed he’d been eligible to enter the country and compete after testing positive for coronavirus last month and making a full recovery.
Australia has witnessed a huge uptick in Covid infections over the past month due to the Omicron variant, with around 2 million cases being recorded – although several states said hospital numbers were plateauing.
Djokovic has already revealed he will be competing in the star-studded Dubai Tennis Championships next month.
Dubai doesn’t have the same strict conditions for entry as Australia, and Djokovic will be able to compete at the tournament he’s won five times previously if he produces a negative PCR test result when he arrives.
He will face defending champion Aslan Karatsev and rising stars Andrey Rublev and Denis Shapovalov at the event which runs from February 21 to 26.
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