Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri welcomes Australia’s decision to allow international tourists

Newswire

Canberra: Pakistani High Commissioner to Australia Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri this week welcomed the news that Australia was open again to vaccinated international tourists, effectively bringing to an end one of the world’s longest and strictest coronavirus border closures.

“Great news for international travelers including those from Pakistan From Monday 21 February 2022, Australia will reopen to all fully vaccinated visa holders, welcoming the return of tourists, business travelers, and other visitors,” he tweeted.

Earlier, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that the country would welcome double-vaccinated overseas tourists starting February 21, almost two years after Australia’s near-complete border restrictions earned it the nicknames of “Fortress Australia” and the “Hermit Kingdom.”

With omicron outbreaks across the country and Australians among the most immunized people in the world, Morrison said it no longer made sense to keep out tourists who have had at least two shots.

“The variant is here in Australia,” he told reporters. “And for those who are coming in who are double-vaccinated, they don’t present any greater risk than those who are already here in Australia. It’s a sensible and I think very important move for us to make as we … drive Australia back to a position of as much normality as we can achieve.”

Morrison stressed, however, that visitors would be expected to provide proof of vaccination. “I think events earlier in the year should have sent a very clear message to everyone around the world that is the requirement to enter into Australia,” Morrison told reporters in an apparent allusion to the deportation of unvaccinated tennis star Novak Djokovic last month.

Unvaccinated visitors must have an exemption and will have to quarantine according to local rules, added Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews.

The announcement comes as a boost to Australia’s struggling tourism industry and marks the latest phase in a gradual easing of restrictions that split some families and left tens of thousands of Australians stranded around the world.

For the first 18 months of the pandemic, Australia barred almost all visitors and required returning citizens and residents to pay for two weeks of costly hotel quarantine. Caps on returning Australians meant many were stuck overseas, unable to see ailing loved ones or attend weddings or funerals. Australians also needed to receive an exemption to leave the country.

Australia left thousands of citizens stranded abroad in the pandemic. But it let the French rugby team in. Restrictions were lifted for immunized Australians in November after the country had given two doses of a coronavirus vaccine to 80 percent of its eligible population. International students, some foreign workers and family members of citizens and permanent residents were allowed to return in mid-December, despite an omicron outbreak causing one of the world’s sharpest spikes in infections.

With about 93 percent of Australians age 12 and above now double-jabbed and omicron present in every state and territory, Morrison said allowing tourists back in would not overload the nation’s hospital system with covid cases.

Infections in Australia have fallen sharply from their peak a month ago, while hospitalizations and the number of patients in intensive care have also begun to decline.