A nurse holds a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine at the Falmouth Health Center in the UK. Photo: Getty Images
News that vaccines to prevent us from getting COVID-19 will soon be used in Australia is affecting travel but does not open the door for us to gallop anywhere in the world. It is only one step and the road is long.
Travelers have yet to be tested
Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine can be 95 percent effective. That’s impressive, but even for that 95 percent, it’s not armored defense. As with any other SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, while this prevents most people vaccinated from contracting the coronavirus, that’s not the whole picture.
In an ABC 7.30 radio interview, Dr. Norman Swan: “The Achilles heel of COVID-19 vaccines is that they may not prevent infection at all and that this has a huge impact on transmission and the pandemic. While it would be great to prevent people from getting sick, COVID-19 The problem – if the vaccines don’t prevent infection and transmission – is that there is no herd immunity and the pandemic continues. “
Therefore, it is necessary to also test those who have been vaccinated to prevent us from becoming infected. Incoming travelers are the main source of infection for us and must remain in quarantine until they test negative.
Antigen tests that detect certain proteins on the surface of the coronavirus can give a result within 15 to 30 minutes, but they are not reliable. A person infected with the coronavirus does not start producing antibodies immediately. It can take several days for a blood antibody test to turn positive. Someone who is infected can return a false negative, and they are a potential risk if allowed to mingle with the wider community.
Because of this, Singapore, which has opened its door to travelers from safe countries including Australia, is required to subject incoming passengers to a more reliable Polymerize Chain Reaction (PCR) test. In Singapore, they also have to self-isolate until the test turns out negative. PCR tests detect the presence of the genetic material of the virus and are currently the sharpest tool in SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis. However, results are slow, at least a few hours and more often a few days, so quarantine is required.
The quarantine won’t end anytime soon, but it could change
Leaving Australia for a short vacation in Bali or a ski trip to the USA is currently off the table. You need permission to leave, and you need a very good reason to do so, as if you returned you would be in hotel quarantine for two weeks. For now, outgoing vacation travel is dead in the water. Expect hotel quarantine to remain in place for most incoming travelers, but it will likely be a nuanced approach depending on where you are from.
Get the latest news and updates emailed straight to your inbox.
For example, New Zealanders are now welcome without quarantine in all Australian states except Western Australia, but issues can arise even in those other states, as an airplane load of kiwis discovered upon their arrival in Brisbane on Saturday December 12th. Instead of falling into the arms of friends and relatives or en route to a beach resort, they were evacuated to spend the next two weeks in hotel quarantine. That means the Christmas pudding is locked in a hotel room alone. The problem was that their flight was marked “red” and was carrying passengers from countries other than New Zealand and as a result was potentially infected with COVID-19. If it had been a “green” flight that only carried New Zealand residents, everyone would have been fine.
For Australians and New Zealanders traveling east across the Tasman, that’s a different story. Anyone entering New Zealand from overseas currently has to be quarantined for two weeks. However, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has suggested that Australian visitors and New Zealanders returning home from Australia by around March may travel quarantine-free, provided that both countries remain COVID-free -19.
That would pave the way for a quarantine-free two-way trip across the Tasman. The Trans-Tasman Safe Border Group, which includes health professionals and representatives from airlines, airports and border authorities from each country, already has a detailed proposal on the table, subject to the go-ahead from ministers from both countries.
In an interview outlining the proposal for TVNZ, Prime Minister Ardern also remarked, “We are very excited to see separate airline employees for quarantine-free travel.” This would wipe out another security flaw in the quarantine system that was recently highlighted when a Sydney van driver chauffeuring international flight crews to and from Sydney Airport tested positive for COVID-19.
If all is well, the resumption of trans-Tasman travel could be the prelude to a more expansive travel bubble that includes some of the Asian countries with low infection rates like Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. Europe or North America will have to show far fewer case numbers before the Australian government allows quarantine in both directions. Even if they vaccinate most of their population against COVID-19, it probably won’t happen until the final months of 2021.
See also: Can you catch COVID-19 while on a flight?
See also: “Losing Hope”: Indefinite Ban on International Travel Destroying Tourism
