Coronavirus: Scott Morrison closes Australian borders to non-residents
Australia is implementing a new travel ban preventing all non-Australian citizens and residents from coming to the country amid the coronavirus crisis.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australians could still return but would still have to self-isolate for 14 days.
“After further consultation with the National Security Committee ... we will be resolving to move to a position where a travel ban will be placed on all non-Australian citizens coming to Australia,” he said.
It will come into effect at 9pm Friday night.
Mr Morrison said there had already been a significant reduction in the travel to Australia by non-citizens and non-residents.
“It is about a third of what it would normally be at this time of the year and we have seen reductions – even in the last few days when we put in place the bans which require people to self-isolate for 14 days,” he said.
“On that decision, the traffic has reduced quite significantly.”
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Mr Morrison said the arrangement would be implemented over the next 24 hours to give people to make other arrangements if they were intending to come to Australia.
“For Australians, of course, they will be able to return and they will be subject, as they already are, to 14 days of isolation upon arrival back in Australia.”
Mr Morrison said about 80 per cent of coronavirus cases in Australia were the result of somebody who had contracted the virus overseas or someone who had direct contact with somebody who returned from overseas.
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“The overwhelming proportion of cases in Australia have been imported,” he said.
“Measures we have put in place have obviously put an impact on that and this is a further measure now that can be further enhanced.”
Qantas and Virgin cancel all international flights
The announcement comes after Qantas announced it would ground all international flights and stand down the majority of its 30,000 employees until the end of May at the earliest as the carrier battles Covid-19’s devastating effects.
Two-thirds of the company’s employees will be temporarily stood down and take paid or unpaid leave, with the company saying the move is to try to preserve as many jobs as possible.
The airline is cutting all international flights from late March, after it recently announced 90 per cent of international flights would be suspended.
Virgin Australia announced on Wednesday it would suspend all international flights and would extend cuts to domestic capacity as the coronavirus outbreak takes its toll on the airline sector.
The airline said it would suspend all international flying from March 30 to June 14 and reduce group domestic capacity by 50 per cent. This is the equivalent of grounding 53 aircraft.
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