Sydney To End Covid-19 Quarantine For Fully Vaccinated International Travelers From Nov 1

New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet said on Friday that Sydney would end its Covid-19 quarantine for fully vaccinated international travelers from November 1.

It was in March 2020 that Australia closed its international borders due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Since then they restricted access to the country only to citizens and permanent residents and imposed a mandatory two-week hotel quarantine on them at their own expense.

“We want people back, we are leading the nation out of the pandemic … we are opening Sydney and New South Wales to the world,” Perrottet told reporters in Sydney, the state capital.

The office of Prime Minister Scott Morrison was not immediately available to comment on the New South Wales plan.

According to the Reuters, New South Wales is expected to reach 80 percent full vaccination levels in the adult population this weekend, while the rest of the country will take at least some weeks to reach that level.

The move to open borders comes as daily infections in New South Wales eased further to 399 from 406 on Thursday, well down from the state’s pandemic high of 1,599 in early September, the Reuters reported.

Neighboring Victoria state reported 2,179 new locally acquired cases, the majority in Melbourne, down from a record 2,297 a day earlier, the report said.

Australia had stayed largely virus-free for most of this year until the third wave of infections fueled by the Delta variant spread across its southeast from late June, forcing a months-long lock down in Sydney, Melbourne, and Canberra. The country’s overall coronavirus numbers are still relatively low, with some 139,000 cases and 1,506 deaths, the Reuters report said.