Scrap your holiday plans this year: Australia’s borders are likely to remain closed throughout 2021 even with everyone vaccinated against Covid-19
- Australians have been banned from leaving the country since March 2020
- Professor Brendan Murphy said that will likely continue throughout 2021
- He said the vaccines may not stop the virus from spreading in the population
Australia’s borders will probably remain closed for most of the year, Health Department Secretary Brendan Murphy said on Monday.
The professor said ‘substantial border restrictions’ will continue throughout 2021 and quarantine of returned Australians will be in place for ‘some time’.
Under some of the strictest rules in the world, Australians have been banned from leaving the country since March and anyone returning must quarantine in a hotel at their own expense for two weeks.
Australia’s borders will probably remain closed for most of the year, Health Secretary Brendan Murphy said on Monday. Pictured: A domestic flight from Sydney to Adelaide
Domestic passengers wait in line to check in at Sydney’s Kingsford Smith domestic airport
Asked if the borders would re-open this year, Professor Murphy told the ABC: ‘It is a big open question. I think the answer is probably no.
‘I think we will go most of this year with still substantial border restrictions, even if we have a lot of the population vaccinated, we don’t know whether that will prevent transmission of the virus and it is likely that quarantine will continue for some time.’
Professor Murphy said there was still too much uncertainty to accurately predict when it would be safe to open the country to overseas arrivals.
‘One of the things about this virus is that the rule book has been made up as we go. I was very careful early on, I remember saying this to the Prime Minister, I don’t want to predict more than two or three months ahead,’ he said.
‘The world is changing so at the moment we have this light at the end of the tunnel, the vaccine, so we will go as safely and as fast as we can to get the population vaccinated and we will look at what happens then.’
Australia is due to start vaccinating the population next month. The vaccines available are proved to reduced illness and death but it is not clear if they stop the virus spreading.
Prime Minster Scott Morrison has said he wants to open Australia to ‘green-lane’ countries where virus levels are low – but so far only New Zealand has qualified.
Outgoing travel is forbidden until at least March 17 this year and the ban is likely to be extended.
Passengers waiting to check in for their flight in the departures area of the Sydney International Airport
Transport Minister Michael McCormack said last month: ‘International borders will be opened when international arrivals do not pose a risk to Australians.’
The government’s vaccine policy paper says proof of vaccination may be required to leave or enter the country.
In the October budget papers, the government said inbound and outbound international travel is ‘expected to remain low through the latter part of 2021, after which a gradual recovery in international tourism is also assumed to occur.’
Mr Morrison has previously flagged the possibility that people entering from lower risk countries may be able to isolate at home instead of in hotels.
‘Home quarantine can play a role in the future,’ he said in September.
Last week Professor Peter Collignon of the Australian National University said ‘some form’ of quarantine could be required even after Australia’s population has been vaccinated.
This is because the vaccines are 70 to 95 per cent effective, meaning millions of Aussies will still be at risk of catching the deadly disease.
Professor Collignon said it would not be safe for Australia to simply remove quarantine requirements once the vaccine is rolled out around the world.
‘If you look at people coming into Australia it’s one or two per cent of returned travellers who have the virus when they land,’ he told Daily Mail Australia.
‘And if you have a vaccine that is 90 per cent effective it means that instead of one or two in 100 we’ll have one or two in a thousand – but that’s still a very high risk of virus. That’s as much as Melbourne was exposed to at the height of the winter outbreak.
‘Until numbers come down around the world to really low levels – and on the basis that we want to keep numbers really low in Australia – I can’t see how we’re not going to have some sort of quarantine, whether at home or in a hotel, for a couple of weeks after you get back.’
Asked when it would be safe to re-introduce quarantine-free travel from the UK and other high-risk countries, Professor Collignon said: ‘My best guess is half way through the middle of next year.’
Australians have been banned from leaving the country since March. Pictured: Tourists in Bali
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