Sydney to stop quarantine for vaccinated travelers from Nov. 1

Sydney, Australia, Oct 15 (EFE).- Australian authorities announced Friday they would eliminate mandatory quarantine for fully vaccinated travelers arriving in Sydney from Nov. 1, when they expect to have fully vaccinated 80 percent of its population against Covid-19.

The measure means Sydney will be Australia’s first city to reopen to the world after Canberra closed international borders in March 2020.

“For people vaccinated with the full dose, Sydney, New South Wales, is open. We want people to come back. We are pulling the nation out of the pandemic,” New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet said.

“The (mandatory) quarantine will be a thing of the past,” he said.

From Nov. 1, people who have received the full Covid-19 vaccine recognized by Australia and a negative PCR test will be allowed to enter Sydney, although international travelers who do not comply with the requirement will have to undergo a mandatory 14-day quarantine.

Perrottet said that while his government will prioritize the return of the tens of thousands of Australians abroad, he will not “discriminate” against anyone with the full vaccine schedule who wants to enter the region.

New South Wales, which recently kept Sydney confined for more than 100 days due to an outbreak of the virus linked to the delta variant, will also take a new step Monday in loosening limits and conditions for social gatherings, as well as lifting capacity restrictions.

The Victoria regional government, confined to the city of Melbourne since the beginning of August, said fully vaccinated New South Wales residents will be able to travel to this region without needing to quarantine if they test negative in a PCR test from Oct. 19.

Australia, where 65.4 percent of the adult population has received both vaccine doses and 83.4 percent has received one jab, has registered about 138,000 infections and more than 1,500 deaths since the start of the pandemic. EFE

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