Australia's Vaccine Passports | IaM (Immigration and Migration)

Australia’s Vaccine Passports

The Australian federal government announced that it will begin trials of a new vaccine passport program with select countries this week.

This is a major step towards the nation’s broader reopening.

Vaccine passports are widely used in the European Union. The International Air Transport Association (IATA), which represents almost 300 airlines globally, urged countries around the world to adopt the European Union’s Digital Covid Certificate as the global standard for vaccine certification.

With rising vaccination rates, Australia is potentially mere months away from easing its stringent international travel restrictions, which have remained in place for months since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has previously disclosed that his plan is to wait until 80% of the adult population is fully immunized before reopening to inbound or outbound foreign travel.

Minister for Trade and Tourism Dan Tehan revealed that the government will be testing the use of vaccine passports in cooperation with several key travel destinations through Australia’s diplomatic missions overseas.

Australia Gears Up for Reopening

In preparation for international reopening, it has been reported that Japan, Singapore, South Korea, the UK, and the US, along with Australia’s neighbouring Pacific islands, are among the countries that have been tapped for inclusion in the trial.

Tehan said that the vaccine passport system would utilize QR codes that are linked to the vaccination records and passport information of inbound or outbound travellers.

So, when that international border opens we want to make sure we're ready for people to be able to travel again and, you know, it's incredibly important that we're doing that preparatory work.
Australia Minister for Trade and Tourism Dan Tehan

Arrivals to Australia will need to have received COVID-19 vaccine types approved by Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), which currently include only Pfizer, Moderna, Janssen/Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca vaccines. The TGA has not approved any Russian or Chinese-developed vaccine brands to date.

These preparatory steps for reopening Australia's international borders are being taken even as the country continues to contend with a widespread outbreak of COVID’s highly infectious Delta variant. The surge, which erupted this summer in areas of New South Wales (NSW), sent populous cities like Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra into extended lockdowns.

To date, 42.6% of Aussies aged 16 and over are already fully vaccinated and 67.8% had had at least their first dose, according to Australia’s Department of Health data.

The government forecasts that it will achieve its goal of fully immunizing 80%of the adult population by late November.

Are you anticipating Australia's border reopening? Talk to us in the comment section below.

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