• Australians vaccinated against COVID-19 could be permitted to travel internationally as early as July, according to a proposal raised by Health Minister Greg Hunt, Guardian Australia reported.
• Hunt is said to have told the Coalition party room that vaccinated travellers could be allowed to bypass 14 days of hotel quarantine, facing reduced restrictions instead.
• The news comes more than a year after Australia closed its international border, and as the nation attempts to drive vaccine uptake within the community.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

Australians vaccinated against COVID-19 could be permitted to leave and reenter the country as early as July, under a proposal Health Minister Greg Hunt reportedly raised before parliamentary allies.

Guardian Australia reports Hunt proposed the trial before the Coalition party room on Tuesday, saying the government is gaming out scenarios for how vaccine take-up could soften Australia’s hard border.

That early analysis suggests a vaccine passport-style arrangement could begin some six to eight weeks from now, according to The Guardian.

Australia slammed its international border shut in March 2020 in an attempt to limit the spread of COVID-19. Overseas travel has been banned since then, with very few exemptions, and those entering Australia must undergo two weeks of hotel quarantine.

The border closure has effectively cleaved families apart, leaving tens of thousands of Australians stranded overseas. It has also ravaged Australia’s tourism and higher education sectors, which turned to international visitors and students for much of their trade.

To date, New Zealand is the only country Australians can travel to without undergoing two weeks of hotel quarantine.

The 2021-2022 Federal Budget suggests the border will reopen in mid-2022 at the earliest, pending vaccination rates.

Proposals raised in the party room reportedly include allowing vaccinated travellers to leave quarantine once they have returned a negative COVID-19 test, instead of staying isolated for the full 14 days.

Beyond stimulating the tourism and aviation sectors, there is hope such an arrangement would reduce the vaccine hesitancy in some corners of the community, which, paradoxically, could keep Australia’s border closed even longer.

Even so, surveys taken before Victoria’s latest COVID-19 lockdown suggest large cohorts of the Australian population are comfortable keeping the border closed until at least mid-2022, even if full vaccination is reached by the end of 2021.

Speaking to reporters in May, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said vaccine passports would be the “next step” in Australia’s reopening to the world.

The Federal Government must “plan for when we reopen, but it’s not safe to do it yet,” he said at the time.

“And so we’ll keep planning and we’ll get those processes in place.”

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