Sydney, Australia
Reuters
Australia is unlikely to reopen its border to international travellers until next year but will look to relax entry rules for students and other long-term visitors, Trade Minister Simon Birmingham said on Wednesday.
Australia has been largely successful in containing the spread of the novel coronavirus, which it attributes to curbs on international travel and tough social-distancing rules.
Travellers wearing protective face masks depart the arrivals section of the international terminal of Kingsford Smith International Airport the morning after Australia implemented an entry ban on non-citizens and non-residents intended to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Sydney, Australia, on 21st March. PICTURE: Reuters/Loren Elliott/File photo
Birmingham said a quarantine rule for returning citizens could be applied to international students and other visitors who plan to stay for a long period of time.
“We can simply work through the 14-day quarantine periods that have worked so well in terms of returning Australians to this country safely,” Birmingham said in a speech to the National Press Club.
The return of international students will be a boost for universities facing big financial losses with the border closed as international education is Australia’s fourth-largest foreign exchange earner, worth $A38 billion a year.
Australia has had more than 7,300 cases of the coronavirus and 102 people have died from COVID-19, the disease it causes.
It recorded its biggest daily rise in new infections in more than a month on Wednesday, with the most of them in Victoria, the second most populous state.
Victoria reported 21 new cases overnight, of which 15 are returned travellers in quarantine, taking the total tally for the day to 22 cases, with some states yet to report their data.
Meanwhile, New Zealand on Wednesday said the defence force will now oversee the country’s quarantine facilities and strengthen border requirements, after a slip up allowed two people with coronavirus to move around the country.
New Zealand on Tuesday lost its COVID-free status when two women who had been given permission to leave quarantine early on compassionate grounds after arriving from Britain tested positive for the coronavirus.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she was appointing the Assistant Chief of Defence, Air Commodore Digby Webb, to oversee all quarantine and to manage isolation facilities, including the processes of exiting people from these facilities.
Ardern said Webb can seek access to military logistics, its operational expertise and, if needed, personnel, for running of the quarantine facilities.
She added that an audit would be done to make sure all processes in place are followed and any changes needed can be made to further strengthen the border facilities.
“I cannot allow the gains we have all made to be squandered by processes that are not followed,” Ardern said at a news conference in parliament.
New Zealand had trumpeted its achievement last week of becoming one of the first countries in the world to eliminate COVID-19 and return to pre-pandemic normality, lifting all social and economic restrictions except border controls.
The two women who arrived from Britain on 7th June went into compulsory quarantine after landing, but had been given special permission to leave the facility early to see their dying parent, even though one had symptoms which she attributed to a pre-existing condition.
Ardern said the infected person should never have been allowed to leave.
“This represents an unacceptable failure of the system,” Ardern said.
“We require not one but two tests to be undertaken at those facilities. ..it did not, and there are no excuses,” she said.
