Australian border to reopen for first time in pandemic

Australians will be eligible to travel when their state's vaccination rate hit 80%

Australia will reopen its international border from November, giving long-awaited freedoms to vaccinated citizens and their relatives.

Since March 2020, Australia has had some of the world's strictest border rules - even banning its own people from leaving the country.

The policy has been praised for helping to suppress Covid, but it has also controversially separated families.

"It's time to give Australians their lives back," PM Scott Morrison said.

Australia has recorded more than 1,300 deaths from Covid-19 and more than 107,000 cases of infection.

People would be eligible to travel when their state's vaccination rate hit 80%, Mr Morrison told a press briefing on Friday.

Travel would not immediately be open to foreigners, but the government said it was working "towards welcoming tourists back to our shores".

At present, people can leave Australia only for exceptional reasons such as essential work or visiting a dying relative.

Entry is permitted for citizens and others with exemptions, but there are tight caps on arrival numbers. This has left tens of thousands stranded overseas.


Mr Morrison said Australia's mandatory 14-day hotel quarantine - which costs each traveller A$3,000 (£1,600; $2,100) - would be replaced by seven days of home quarantine for vaccinated Australians or permanent residents.

Unvaccinated travellers must still quarantine for 14 days in hotels.

Australian carrier Qantas responded by announcing it would restart its international flying a month earlier. It had already put flights to major overseas destinations on sale from 18 December.

Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra are currently in lockdown due to outbreaks of the virus.

That has helped prompt a surge in the vaccine uptake in recent months.

New South Wales - which includes Sydney - is on track to be first state to cross the 80% threshold, in a few weeks. Victoria - containing Melbourne - is not far behind.

But states such as Queensland and Western Australia have threatened to keep their borders closed until vaccine rates are even higher.

These states have managed to maintain Covid rates at or near zero, after shutting their borders to states with infections.

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