The Australian government yesterday told its citizens not to travel abroad and warned those already overseas to rush home as it took unprecedented steps to choke off the spread of COVID-19.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison also ordered a halt to “non-essential” indoor gatherings of more than 100 people, on top of an existing ban on outdoor events of more than 500 that has stunned the sports-mad nation.
Although Morrison called the extraordinary travel crackdown an “indefinite ban” on foreign trips, the advice released by the government was couched as a recommendation.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“Regardless of your destination, age or health, our advice is do not travel at this time,” the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Smarttraveller alert said.
A spokesman for national carrier Qantas said that it would continue issuing tickets to Australians wanting to leave the country on the few flights it continues to operate.
“It’s advice, it’s not a ban,” he said.
Morrison called the pandemic “a once-in-100-year-type event.”
“We haven’t seen this sort of thing in Australia since the end of the First World War,” he said.
“We are going to keep Australia running, we are going to keep Australia functioning, [but] it won’t look like it normally does,” he said, girding the country for measures that are to last at least six months.
Australia has more than 500 confirmed cases of coronavirus and six fatalities.
The number of infections has been escalating daily, with the majority of the new cases being returning travelers or people infected by them.
Australia yesterday urged citizens overseas to return home promptly or risk being stranded in an ominous sign it is concerned that flights to remote South Pacific nations might shut down entirely.
It has already ordered all travelers arriving from overseas to self-quarantine for two weeks.
In announcing the ban on indoor gatherings of more than 100 people, Morrison excluded public transportation, shopping sites, health facilities and schools from the measure.
He rejected growing calls for the government to close all schools, as has been done in other countries, saying that the impact on society and the economy from such a closure would be “severe,” costing “tens of thousands of jobs.”
“Whatever we do, we have to do for at least six months,” he said, adding that among other consequences a long school closure would remove 30 percent of workers from the healthcare industry as parents remained home with their children.
Australian Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy also ruled out the kind of blanket shutdown that has been imposed in parts of Europe.
“A short-term, two-to-four-week shutdown of society is not recommended by any of our experts,” he said, speaking alongside Morrison.
“It does not achieve anything, we have to be in this for the long haul,” he said.
The latest moves to restrict foreign travel came as Australia’s two main airlines slashed overseas services, with Qantas axing 90 percent of flights and Virgin Australia grounding its entire international fleet.
Sydney airport was quiet yesterday, with a nearly empty arrivals hall and a limited number of departing flights, although check-in lanes for those were crowded.
Shea de Lorenzo, who said she made it onto a rare international flight out of Sapporo, Japan, expressed relief to have made it home.
“We’re so lucky, [it was] touch and go. Really lucky,” she said.
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