Home isolation or shorter hotel quarantine stays could replace the current 14-day hotel quarantine stay for those returning from overseas in coming months as more of Australia gets vaccinated, the head of the federal health department says.
International travel could also return next year, Professor Brendan Murphy said, as vaccination programs continue around the world.
Health Department secretary Professor Brendan Murphy said international travel could be on the horizon as more of the world gets vaccinated.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
“As we get more and more Australians vaccinated, and as more and more countries around the world get vaccinated, we will start to progressively look at what sort of border and quarantine measures we have to do,” he told Sky News on Sunday morning.
“We might think about, for example, reducing the length of quarantine or more home quarantine, particularly for vaccinated people.”
Predicting what might happen with national borders was tricky, Professor Murphy said, particularly because it was still unclear for how long any COVID-19 vaccines would keep people protected.
“I’m hopeful that pretty good international travel will happen next year, but it’s just too early to tell,” he said.
Before international travel can resume, Professor Murphy said the country will see a halt to internal border closures.
“When we get a lot of our population vaccinated, particularly the vulnerable people who are at risk of severe disease, it is for us as a nation to open up, reduce all of the restrictions, and make sure we don’t close any more state borders,” he said.
Phase 1B of the vaccination rollout begins on Monday, with six million vulnerable people set to start getting vaccinated across the country. Among those targeted in the phase are people aged over 70, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults over 55, and anyone with certain underlying health conditions.
Some of those vaccinations may be delayed, as flooding and extreme weather threatening to disrupt logistics. Finance Minister Simon Birmingham said the government was working with freight and logistics companies to work out exactly how those supplies would be affected throughout the week.
Already, hundreds of general practice clinics and Commonwealth respiratory clinics have received their first shipment of AstraZeneca doses. The scale of the vaccine program will ramp up as production from CSL’s Melbourne facility increases over the next 12 weeks.
Professor Murphy said one year ago, he would not have dreamt Australia and the world would be in the position it is now with vaccines.
“12 months ago I would have said, there’s no hope we would have had vaccines in early 2021, and if we did, when we do get them I would have thought they’d be mildly, partially effective,” he said.
Instead, Australia was in a “wonderful position” with two safe and effective vaccines, Professor Murphy said.
More than 11 million people in the UK have had the AstraZeneca vaccine, and millions around the globe have had Pfizer.
“The data that’s coming out of all of those countries is that both vaccines are really good at preventing severe disease, preventing hospitalisation, preventing death, and are probably likely to help prevent transmission,” Professor Murphy said.
As for a return to normal life, the health department secretary said it will happen but give it time.
“It may be that COVID the virus is going to be with us, and everyone may need an annual booster dose like we have with flu,” Professor Murphy said.
“As long as most of the population are protected, most people who get this virus have mild disease but as long as we’ve protected those vulnerable people I think we can get back to normal, but we just need to be patient.”
NSW and Victoria recorded no community COVID-19 cases on Sunday.
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Rachel Clun is a federal political reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, covering health.
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2021-03-21 00:25:05Z
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