SYDNEY, Australia (cu)_Australia will introduce new rules around air travel, including a temporary decrease the number of international arrivals, as the country battles against the UK’s new variant of COVID-19, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.
The Prime Minister noted that the national cabinet decided on Friday (Jan 8) to take “a number of actions” in relation to air travel and quarantine, in order to “reduce and de-bulk the risk in terms of exposure to the new strain”.
Accordingly, international arrivals in NSW, Western Australia, in Queensland will be reduced by 50 per cent until February 15, and those travelling to Australia are required to return a negative COVID-19 test result prior to their departure to Australia.
However, exceptions will be made for certain categories of arrivals, including seasonal workers from amber-risk countries where there is limited access to testing, Morrison said.
Moreover, travellers and flight staff are expected to undertake measures for infection prevention, which includes masks being mandatory on flights, both domestically and internationally.
Australia’s Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said the major risk to the country’s COVID-19 response was from people arriving from overseas. According to him, in the UK, about one in 50 people are currently an active COVID-19 case, while in Australia, this number is about one in 85,000. Therefore, Professor Kelly noted that the measures announced on Friday would increase Australia’s chances of keeping the virus out of the country, or at least identify when it arrives.
Brisbane hotspot
Meanwhile, Brisbane has been declared a hotspot and the city will enter a three-day lockdown, after the new, more transmissible strain of the Coronavirus was detected in a quarantine hotel cleaner.
This is the first known instance of the variant entering the Australian community outside of hotel quarantine, and Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the new restrictions will begin at 18:00 on Friday (08:00 GMT).
“What we do know is that this new strain is some 70 per cent more transmissible than the previous strains of the virus. This strain is likely to become, in the very near future, the dominant strain [as it largely already is] in the UK,” PM Morrison said.
He added that while Australia had a lot to learn from how the hotel cleaner became exposed the new variant, however, today’s lockdown in Brisbane would be a blueprint for how the country deals with cases of the UK strain each time.
“We’ve got a very live example in Brisbane, one of our major cities. Let’s learn what we need to learn over the next few days. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There’s no need to catastrophise this. But there is a very real need to address it seriously,” the Prime Minister said.
