Predictions of when international flights may resume/bans lifted

[lovetravellingoz]

I agree. The point being made in the interview was that it then relies on the foreign country meeting the strictest requirement rather than your local requirement. For example, Australia might independently decide that Singapore has the virus sufficiently under control that they would want to open bilateral movement again. NZ might decide that Singapore still has work to do to get there. NZ might effectively have a veto over Australia reopening movement to/from Singapore. And vice versa.

Given that most of our population has not had CV19, and even if they had immunity is unknown, I think Australia, and NZ, would want 14 day quarantine anyway from any country that is not CV free.

It is hard to see that changing until we have either effective treatments and or vaccines.

If testing can be made more reliable, as well as quicker, potentially visitors could be allowed in without quarantine if they are tested on arrival. This may still require a mini-quaratine of several days as there can be a slight delay in being infected and testing positive. Note that this would be testing if they have active CV19, and not just whether they have ever had it.

 

[p--and--t]

They don't need to really rush or worry as I suspect the US has fallen to almost dead last on most people's wish list to visit (unless absolutely necessary)

Agreed, just trying to temper some of the enthusiasm shown by some on AFF & elsewhere that QF will be flying A380's to the US by July/Aug

 

[Gremlin]

Given that most of our population has not had CV19, and even if they had immunity is unknown, I think Australia, and NZ, would want 14 day quarantine anyway from any country that is not CV free.

It is hard to see that changing until we have either effective treatments and or vaccines.

If testing can be made more reliable, as well as quicker, potentially visitors could be allowed in without quarantine if they are tested on arrival. This may still require a mini-quaratine of several days as there can be a slight delay in being infected and testing positive. Note that this would be testing if they have active CV19, and not just whether they have ever had it.

I think the idea of bringing other countries into the "bubble" requires more than them just having low CV numbers. There's both a supply and demand aspect to it as well. Various posters have talked about Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong as potential add ons to an Aust/NZ bubble. But if I look at it from NZ's perspective, Australia provides six times as many travellers as all four countries combined. From NZ's perspective, Australia would probably be much lower risk than any or all of our Asian friends. So there's not much benefit for NZ extending to those nations and an increased risk. This is where I think the "veto" concept comes into play - it might make sense to extend to Hong Kong or South Korea if you are looking at it bilaterally as an Aussie, but maybe far less so if you are connected in a Aust/NZ bubble.

 

[woodborer]

I think the idea of bringing other countries into the "bubble" requires more than them just having low CV numbers. There's both a supply and demand aspect to it as well. Various posters have talked about Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong as potential add ons to an Aust/NZ bubble. But if I look at it from NZ's perspective, Australia provides six times as many travellers as all four countries combined. From NZ's perspective, Australia would probably be much lower risk than any or all of our Asian friends. So there's not much benefit for NZ extending to those nations and an increased risk. This is where I think the "veto" concept comes into play - it might make sense to extend to Hong Kong or South Korea if you are looking at it bilaterally as an Aussie, but maybe far less so if you are connected in a Aust/NZ bubble.

I think we need to be careful about what type of travel is being talked about. Some of the bubbles are not about unfettered tourism travel between the two countries.

What some of the governments are looking at, at least initially, is freeing up some of the travel related to trade, business and maybe even family/compassionate related travel.

Perhaps there will be two types of bubbles. The business bubbles, and the tourism bubbles. I just think tourism related travel is not on the immediate agenda.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

I think the idea of bringing other countries into the "bubble" requires more than them just having low CV numbers. There's both a supply and demand aspect to it as well. Various posters have talked about Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong as potential add ons to an Aust/NZ bubble. But if I look at it from NZ's perspective, Australia provides six times as many travellers as all four countries combined. From NZ's perspective, Australia would probably be much lower risk than any or all of our Asian friends. So there's not much benefit for NZ extending to those nations and an increased risk. This is where I think the "veto" concept comes into play - it might make sense to extend to Hong Kong or South Korea if you are looking at it bilaterally as an Aussie, but maybe far less so if you are connected in a Aust/NZ bubble.

As I stated I do not see any country being added to the Anzac bubble (ie free to travel with no quarantine) unless they are CV free for some time yet, if at all. None or most all of the Asian Nations will be CV free for some time yet.

More likely additions would be some of the Pacific Islands. Good for travellers but not so much for business.

I think the trade off is being in a bubble gets more people back to work than if we are not in a bubble. By being in a bubble it means that restaurants, pubs, cafes etc as well as live theatre, picture theatres sport etc can all be reopened eventually to maximum capacity (ie in stages and once we are CV19 free for a while the % open is ). Plus many other businesses where social distancing is difficult. Even office towers due to the elevators are problematic.

International tourism would remain low, and we as international travellers will be grumpier, but Australians as a whole will be healthier and the economy stronger.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

I think we need to be careful about what type of travel is being talked about. Some of the bubbles are not about unfettered tourism travel between the two countries.

What some of the governments are looking at, at least initially, is freeing up some of the travel related to trade, business and maybe even family/compassionate related travel.

Perhaps there will be two types of bubbles. The business bubbles, and the tourism bubbles. I just think tourism related travel is not on the immediate agenda.

I can't see business or family/compassionate travellers being exempt from quarantine measures. Too easy to start clusters on return.



I can see them being allowed to travel as a Stage 1 relaxation of international travel if they quarantine on return.

I could envisage a later Stage 2 of anyone being allowed to travel, including just for leisure. if they quarantine.

Stage 3, to free things up even more would require a vaccine and/or successful treatments.


Note: Quarantine could end up being a test of return with quarantine of only several days to insure that if infected that you will have had it long enough to generate a positive result. Any positive result then requiring the full 14 day quarantine.

 

[drron]

Taiwan,South Korea and Hong Kong have controlled the virus better than Australia or NZ.
And most of Asia haven't got a major problem with Covid.

 

[woodborer]

As I stated I do not see any country being added to the Anzac bubble (ie free to travel with no quarantine) unless they are CV free for some time yet, if at all. None or most all of the Asian Nations will be CV free for some time yet.

More likely additions would be some of the Pacific Islands. Good for travellers but not so much for business.

I guess it will be up to the governments to decide, but I think we need to learn how to manage outbreaks, rather than try to keep things to zero.

Remember, our aim was to protect the health system. We've done that, but cratered the economy at the same time. I think we need to get to the balance that South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong seem to have managed.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

I guess it will be up to the governments to decide, but I think we need to learn how to manage outbreaks, rather than try to keep things to zero.

Having open travel with any country with active CV19 would provide ample practice at managing outbreaks.....just look at what rippled from one cruise ship.

Whereas quarantine makes it easy. This could possibly include utilising mini-quarantines combine with better testing. This path is not risk free however and so managing outbreaks quickly would still be required.

Just testing on arrival is not good enough with the current tests.

But things keep moving, and so things may change.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Remember, our aim was to protect the health system.

It was, but I think the Governments have moved on even though they have not officially stated so. If they only wanted to protected the health system we could have already reactivated many things.

Personally I think that want now to be essentially CV19 free, but ready to jump on any possible new case or outbreak if and when they occur.
When that happens travel will be friend up between Australia and NZ.

We've done that, but cratered the economy at the same time. I think we need to get to the balance that South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong seem to have managed.

Our economy has been less hard hit than many as many have stayed in work. Munch more of the economy will start to be reactivated as of next week in stages.

What specifically are South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong now doing that we need to do?


That is now doing. Obviously Taiwan was the country that acted the best and most decisively early on as they were waiting for such a virus.

 

[drron]

Well both South Korea and Taiwan never had our level of lock down and still don't.
However both were well aware of the risk of a pandemic so were ready to go when covid hit.
So what they did early-close border to anyone with a PRC passport and later to all non residents.
Rapid activation of contact tracing ability.
A population who are aware of public health measures such as wearing masks.Now wearing masks is ineffective at preventing illness.However more effective if people do have the infection it lessens the risk of them passing on the infection.

 

[Himeno]

As has been mentioned previously (many days back in the thread) there has NEVER been a successful Corona virus developed. Not ever. Now this time may be different, but then again, I've seen many companies go out of business saying that.

The common cold (aka rhinovirus) is a corona virus. Immunity only lasts between 4 weeks to 17 weeks from what I've seen = NO HERD immunity.

There are a couple of other common viruses around that are also corona viruses.

No vaccine has ever been developed.

Again with the fearmongering.
Just because there is not currently a working, usable human vaccine for a coronavirus, it does NOT mean that there won't be, or can't be. The primary reason there isn't is because there has been no funding and/or a lack of test subjects. Both SARS and MERS had promising vaccines in development. Both have working vaccines in animals.
There have been no known infections of SARS since 2004, so there is no longer any funding for research or development, nor anyone to test a vaccine on.
MERS is mostly limited to a single region with limited infections. There are human trials of a MERS vaccine underway, but the small amount of infections limits the speed of testing.
But oh no... There's no funding for research. There's no one to test this vaccine on. It must not be possible to make a vaccine.

There are MANY viruses that cause the "common cold". 4 of which are coronaviruses. Rhinoviruses cause most colds and are NOT a coronavirus. Each common cold virus has different amounts of immunity. It is quite possible to be immune to one viral cause of colds, and get a cold from a different virus.
You could get a cold from HRV-C51, recover from that and be immune for 3 years, then get another cold from HRV-B5, become immune to that for 5 months, then get another cold from HCoV-229E. You could have concurrent natural immunity to 30 cold viruses, and still get a cold from another one.

The constant yelling that there "has never been a working coronavirus vaccine" and subsequent suggestions that there won't or can't be just demonstrates a failure to understand why that is the case and ignores any progress there has been done to develop one.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Well both South Korea and Taiwan never had our level of lock down and still don't.
However both were well aware of the risk of a pandemic so were ready to go when covid hit.
So what they did early-close border to anyone with a PRC passport and later to all non residents.
Rapid activation of contact tracing ability.
A population who are aware of public health measures such as wearing masks.Now wearing masks is ineffective at preventing illness.However more effective if people do have the infection it lessens the risk of them passing on the infection.

Yes I understand their past measures, but my question was asking about what we should do post-reactivation ( Much of our lock down here is about to disappear progressively) that they are doing that we are not?

Contact tracing we have already massively ramped up. Covid Safe app is out and growing.

In the context of this thread, are they going to free up international travel, and is so how are they controlling it (Serious question as I have not followed what they are currently doing, or are about to do with respect to international travel)?

PS: Taiwan has one big problem in that 400,000 of their population normally work in mainland China. But they obviously have political issues on both sides with being in a Taiwan/China bubble.... Australia and NZ have a lot of workers and shared families and so apart from the economic benefits that people connection is a strong reason in itself for an Anzac bubble.

 

[oz_mark]

Taiwan,South Korea and Hong Kong have controlled the virus better than Australia or NZ.
And most of Asia haven't got a major problem with Covid.

One of the things that will need to be done down the track is to understand why countries such as Australia were so ill-prepared for a pandemic.

 

[CityRail]

One of the things that will need to be done down the track is to understand why countries such as Australia were so ill-prepared for a pandemic.

Australia did reasonably well other than we have a few outbreaks and missteps with Ruby Princess.
Other than that, our response has been great.

 

[moa999]

Both SARS and MERS had promising vaccines in development.

As I understood the most promising lab SARS vaccine failed miserably in animal testing, actually exacerbating some symptoms.

Also not clear how long being infected, or having a vaccine, will actually provide protection for.
The common cold (also a coronavirus) only gives you immunity for 3-6 months

 

[drron]

Basically those nations didn't lock down.South Korea did close schools but not restaurants or offices.
So they are continuing extensive tracking and testing.From what i have read both were ready for ramping up tracking of contacts quickly.We took a lot longer.
So basically they do not have to make many changes.

The thing that I think goes against us is in general our population aren't as likely to continue measures such as distancing and haven't really taken up the wearing of masks.

As for foreign travellers they have said it depends on the situation in other countries and they have said they don't see travel to Europe happening soon.They haven't said anything about the USA but both Taiwan and South Korea do depend on the US for Defence.

Quite a few people including virologists are now questioning the value of prolonged lock downs.

 

[Himeno]

The common cold (also a coronavirus) only gives you immunity for 3-6 months

Did you not even read the post you quoted?

 

[moa999]

Did you not even read the post you quoted?

I did. The post was more about your statement re a SARS vaccine showing promise in testing before being dropped as the virus petered out.

Have also been some suggestions (not yet peer reviewed) that we are already seeing multiple Covid strains, some more virulent than others.

 

[oz_mark]

Australia did reasonably well other than we have a few outbreaks and missteps with Ruby Princess.
Other than that, our response has been great.

It did well in the circumstances it found itself, but we weren't ready to amp up testing (lack of reagents), shortage of PPE, and so on. If better prepared, it may not have cost us as much as it will end up costing.