Australia to Allow Vaccinated Citizens to Resume International Travel Next Month

Australia will allow vaccinated citizens to resume international travel next month.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Friday that pandemic travel restrictions would be lifted once 80 percent of the population aged 16 and older were fully vaccinated, the Associated Press reported.

"We've saved lives. We've saved livelihoods, but we must work together to ensure that Australians can reclaim the lives that they once had in this country," Morrison said.

There is no word yet when Australia will welcome international tourists back.

Travel restrictions will remain in place for unvaccinated Australians. However, those with medical exemptions from the vaccine and children too young to get the shot will be able to travel.

For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.

Australia introduced some of the toughest travel restrictions of any democracy in the world on people entering and leaving the island nation on March 20 last year.

Most Australians have had to argue for rare exemptions from the travel ban to leave the country. There are a few exceptions to the ban including government employees and essential workers. Tourism is never accepted as a reason to cross the border.

Hundreds of thousands have failed to reach relatives' death beads, missed funerals or weddings and have yet to be introduced to grandchildren because of restrictions aimed at keeping COVID-19 out of Australia.

New South Wales would likely become the first state to reach the 80 percent vaccination benchmark and Sydney's airport the first to open to international travel, Morrison said.

"We've saved lives. We've saved livelihoods, but we must work together to ensure that Australians can reclaim the lives that they once had in this country," Morrison said.

Sydney-based Qantas Airways announced international flights would resume from November 14 to London and Los Angeles.

Morrison offered no clue to when other nationalities would be welcome to visit Australia.

"We'll be working towards complete quarantine-free travel for certain countries, such as New Zealand, when it is safe to do so," he said.

Australia has its closest relationship with New Zealand, whose citizens are considered Australian permanent residents. The neighbors allowed quarantine-free travel across the Tasman Sea before the Delta variant outbreak began in Sydney in June.

The Australian Tourism Export Council, which represents a sector that made 45 billion Australian dollars ($33 billion) a year from international tourists before the pandemic, said the end of the travel ban paved the way for visitors from around the world returning by March.

"It marks a shift in thinking within both the government and community sentiment to reengaging with the world," the council's managing director Peter Shelley said in a statement.

A cap on the number of Australian citizens and permanent residents allowed to return each week has left 45,000 people stranded overseas. It's aimed at reducing pressure on hotel quarantine, which the more contagious Delta variant had made more difficult to manage.

The cap would only apply to the unvaccinated under the new regime. Fully vaccinated Australians would be able to quarantine at home and for only a week instead of the current two weeks in a hotel.

Australia on Friday added China's Sinovac and Indian-made AstraZeneca shots known as Covishield to a list of vaccines that Australians can take and be recognized as fully vaccinated.