The Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison has announced that international tourists will be allowed to come back to the country from February 21.
As a condition to be accepted in Australia all international travellers will be required to be fully vaccinated.
This decision came after almost two years of ban on International tourists amid the COVOD19 pandemic.
Australia technically opened its international borders in late December 2021, however, only Australian citizens, permanent residents and their immediate family members were allowed to travel. It was later extended to international students, migrant workers and backpackers.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said this decision will provide a much-needed boost to the tourism sector.
“I know the tourism industry will be looking forward to that, and over the next two weeks they’ll get the opportunity both for visitors to becoming and for them to be gearing up to welcome international visitors back to Australia.”
“The condition is you must be double vaccinated to come to Australia. That’s the rule. Everyone is expected to abide by it,”
said Mr Morrison.
However, States and territories will continue to have designated quarantine caps and other restrictions placed to manage the COVID19.
Girish Patel is a registered migration agent based in Melbourne.
He told The Australia Today that the tourism and travel sector was facing an extreme downturn due to lockdowns and travel bans.
“On an average, we use to process more than 200 tourist and international student visas every week in summers before lockdowns hopefully we will achieve those numbers in the coming weeks.”
This decision of opening the borders for tourists comes on the background of a significant drop in cases in NSW and Victoria.
NSW reported 14 COVID-19 deaths On Monday, while there were seven deaths in Victoria, Queensland saw 19 deaths, and both the ACT and Tasmania recorded one each.
The latest case numbers showed there were 7347 new infections in NSW and 8275 in Victoria, while Queensland registered 4701 cases, Tasmania had 443 and the ACT had 299.
