Scott Morrison has warned international borders will remain closed indefinitely if it means protecting Australians from deadly outbreaks of mutant Covid-19 strains from overseas.
The Prime Minister said Australians had come to accept local lockdowns as ‘part of living with Covid-19’ and that residents did not have ‘an appetite’ for change.
He warned that reopening the borders too soon would expose the country to another and more ruthless outbreak of Covid-19, like the ones experienced in the UK, India and Europe.
‘We sit here as an island that’s living like few countries in the world are at the moment,’ he told The Sunday Telegraph.
‘We have to be careful not to exchange that way of life for what everyone else has.’
Scott Morrison has warned international borders will remain closed indefinitely if it means protecting Australians from a deadly outbreak of Covid-19 from overseas
Australians have been banned from leaving the country since March 2020 without special exemptions, and only citizens and permanent residents have been allowed to enter under some of the strictest Covid-19 border rules in the world.
Last year, the Government predicted international borders would be open in October 2021 after the adult population had been offered a vaccine.
However Finance Minister Simon Birmingham said the date will be pushed back to some time in 2022 amid the slow vaccine rollout and uncertainty over the Covid-19 vaccine’s ability to protect against mutating strains of the virus.
India is currently grappling with its deadliest outbreak of the virus with nearly 240,000 people dead.
The country has recorded more than 400,000 new cases of Covid-19 in three consecutive days and its hospitals are struggling with a shortage of oxygen supplies to treat severely infected residents who are having trouble breathing.
Mr Morrison is saying he will wait until ‘clear evidence’ proves the vaccines are effective against mutant strains before allowing vaccinated Australians to travel overseas again.
‘The next big step that can be taken is that Australians who are vaccinated are able to travel and return to Australia without having to hotel quarantine, and ideally we only have to engage in some sort of home quarantine of a less restrictive nature,’ he said.
Mr Morrison said he hoped vaccinated Australians would be exempt from any future lockdowns imposed by state governments.
The Prime Minister also admitted he could not put a timeframe on when the country would begin to accept overseas travellers again.
Shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers said the federal government had a responsibility to bring Australians home after becoming stranded overseas because of the pandemic.
‘The government’s got the responsibility to get vaccinations and quarantine right to make that possible,’ he told ABC’s Insiders.
Thousands of Australians have been also left stranded in India because of the border closure and threatened with jail time if they try to make their way back into Australia.
‘What we are seeing in India is incredibly distressing,’ Mr Chalmers said.
The Prime Minister said Australians had come to accept local lockdowns as ‘part of living with Covid-19’ and that residents did not have ‘an appetite’ for change
‘We sit here as an island that’s living like few countries in the world are at the moment,’ Mr Morrison said
‘Thousands of Australians, not just abandoned there to those horrific scenes, but are threatened with jail time as well.
‘We wouldn’t even be having this conversation if the prime minister hadn’t comprehensively stuffed up vaccinations and quarantine.’
News of the international border remaining closed has come as a hammer blow to millions of Australians who have not been able to see family members overseas for more than a year.
According to the 2016 census, half of Australians were either born overseas or have at least one parent who was born overseas.
Earlier this month, Trade Minister Dan Tehan revealed the Government will take a ‘systematic’ approach to opening the borders which will see travel bubbles set up with individual nations.
New Zealand travelers embrace at Sydney International Airport. Australians can travel to New Zealand but no-where else
‘Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam have all been mentioned as potentials in that area,’ he said, without giving any dates for when bubbles may start.
Australia has had a two-way travel bubble with New Zealand since April 18.
Although Mr Morrison has warned he will keep the borders closed over fears of another Covid-19 outbreak, a top epidemiologist says it is ‘only a matter of time’ until Australia has another one.
University of Melbourne professor James McCaw predicted cases will increase as people socialise more frequently and the virus spreads undetected.
He said eventually an outbreak will avoid the diligent work of contract tracers, and only mass vaccination would stop it.
‘We will expect incursions at least once a month and more often. And while we mix more socially, the chance of one of those taking hold goes up very quickly,’ he told the Sydney Morning Herald.
‘The virus will win. But it won’t have a devastating impact if we are vaccinated.’
Australia’s international borders will not be ‘flung open next year,’ finance minister Simon Birmingham has said (pictured, A Covid tester at Bondi Beach)
Professor McCaw, who is leading a research team providing expertise on the pandemic to the Federal Government, went on to state the British B117 strain of the virus has the potential to be a negative game changer in Australia.
‘That strain is more transmissible and is more severe, and the severity comes to lower age groups,’ he said.
The Federal Government aims to vaccinate 25 million people in Australia aged over 16 but just 2.5 million doses of coronavirus vaccines have been administered by medical staff to date.
Supply shortages and a ‘rare but serious’ blood clot complication linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine have been significant factors.
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Dr Suman Majumdar, an infectious diseases physician at the Burnet Institute in Melbourne, believes the current virus is ‘stronger than we have ever seen’ and is more powerful than the Wuhan virus which emerged from China in 2020.
With winter looming, there are fears people with symptoms may dismiss them, fearing they just have the common cold.
This could result in the virus spreading rapidly across the nation.
Mr Morrison said he hoped vaccinated Australians would be exempt from any future lockdowns imposed by state governments
