No final decision has been made on the restrictions that will be in effect once a vaccine against the coronavirus has been put on the market, Australian Health Secretary Greg Hunt assured Tuesday (November 24).
But he hinted that the entry requirement for travelers could be a strict two-week quarantine, or vaccination.
For his part, the boss of the Australian airline Qantas has indicated that it will require passengers taking its international flights to be vaccinated beforehand.
"We are considering changing our terms of use for international travelers, to tell them that we will ask people to be vaccinated before they can board the plane," company CEO Alan said Monday evening. Joyce, on Channel Nine television.
We will ask people to get vaccinated before they can get on the plane
Alan Joyce, CEO of Qantas Company
"For domestic flights, we will have to see what happens for the Covid-19 but for international travelers arriving in Australia and for people leaving the country, we think it is a necessity", he said for follow-up.
Read also: Covid-19: Qantas will require the vaccination of its passengers
Borders closed since March
Australia illustrates the dilemma posed by the Covid-19 pandemic to all countries of the world: prioritizing the health aspect or the economic aspect.
WILLIAM WEST / AFP
For his part, Greg Hunt said: "We expect people who come to Australia while Covid-19 remains a serious disease in the world to be either vaccinated, or placed in isolation."
Australia has closed its borders since March to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
As a result, tens of thousands of Australians are stranded abroad, with the government only allowing a limited number of its nationals to return each week.
This policy of isolation seems to have borne fruit, since the country has recorded since the start of the pandemic only 907 deaths for just over 27,800 cases.
Vaccination records to take the plane?
As vaccine development appears to be picking up steam, Australia's Health Secretary has hinted Australians could start getting vaccinated as early as March 2021.
The
Qantas
CEO
, for his part, said he expects compulsory vaccination for boarding a plane to be a measure that becomes mainstream in the world of air travel, as governments and airlines are currently considering, according to him, to the introduction of electronic vaccination records.
Other major airlines, however, have deemed it too early to come to a conclusion on what the air travel requirements will be once a vaccine becomes widely available.
"
We have no concrete plans to announce at this stage about the vaccine because it is still being developed and it will take time for it to be distributed,
" an official told AFP. by
Korean Air
.
Japan Airlines
has also said it has no plans to ask foreign travelers to be vaccinated, for the moment asking its "
passengers to follow the rules of their destination country, such as being tested
."
Hit hard, like all other airlines in the world, by the sudden slowdown in air traffic due to the epidemic, Qantas cut 8,500 jobs and grounded more than 200 planes.
Several companies have totally collapsed because of the pandemic, including Virgin Australia, LATAM and Flybe.
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