Prime Minister Scott Morrison reveals four-phase vaccination roadmap out of coronavirus pandemic

Border closures and city-wide lockdowns will be a part of life until every Australian adult has been offered a vaccine, hopefully by the end of this year, a new roadmap for getting the nation “to the other side” of the pandemic has confirmed.

The only immediate change from the four-stage plan agreed to in-principle by National Cabinet on Friday is that from July 14 the number of Australians returning from overseas will halve to 3035 a week.

This was a win for the Labor premiers of WA, Queensland and Victoria, who called for the arrivals cap to be slashed to reduce the risk of outbreaks from hotel quarantine.

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But NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, below, said she was “disappointed”, accusing some States of failing to take their “fair share” of travellers.

Scott Morrison said the national plan — which he described as a “new deal” — would be linked to immunisation targets that give vaccinated Australians greater freedom from restrictions, introduced a staged resumption of international travel and eventually see COVID-19 treated “like the flu”.

The roadmap is reliant on almost all Australian adults rolling up their sleeves so States can at some point in 2022 shift from focusing on case numbers to rates of hospitalisation and deaths.

But it does not yet include any timeframe or specify what vaccination rate would need to be reached for the States to stop using harsh restrictions and instead allow COVID to circulate in the community.

The Prime Minister said the vaccination threshold would be determined by modelling — “a scientific number, not a political number” — of the highly transmissible Delta variant that plunged Perth and Sydney into lockdown this week.

“If you get vaccinated, you get to change how we live as a country. You get to change how you live in Australia — and I think this is a very powerful message,” Mr Morrison said.

WA’s Chief Health Officer Andy Robertson said modelling of the Alpha variant found about 80 per cent of the population needed protection “before it really had a serious impact on the outbreak curve” and for Delta it would “probably have to be higher”.

The first phase of the new strategy relies on a partially vaccinated nation continuing to use restrictions to suppress the virus, but States and Territories would be invited to experiment with alternatives to hotel quarantine. South Australia will be the first State to trial seven days’ home quarantine for international vaccinated international travellers.

Mark McGowan said he was “more than happy to let SA do it and see how it goes”.

“The key point ... is vaccination is king. We’ve got to get as many people vaccinated as possible over the course of the next six months or so before we can start looking at those sorts of initiatives more broadly,” the Premier said.

Lockdowns will be “used only as a last resort” under the plan’s current phase, but Mr McGowan agreed the wording was open to interpretation by different jurisdictions.

He cited NSW as an example of a government that resisted lockdowns in response to low case numbers, only to see the Sydney outbreak on Friday grow by another 31 infections to 226, including three patients in ICU.

“It is subjective. NSW’s version of last resort is get 80 cases and then you have community spread and a lockdown that might go for weeks and weeks, if not months,” Mr McGowan said.

“Our view of 'last resort is that you listen to the medical advice, you see if there's any prospect of community spread and you try and kill it quickly and efficiently right then.”

The halving of overseas arrivals will allow health authorities in WA to have an empty room between guests in Perth’s six quarantine hotels, which Mr McGowan said would “absolutely reduce the prospect” of room-to-room virus transmission.

As the hotel quarantine capacity was cut, Federal Finance Minister Simon Birmingham confirmed if agreement was reached with the State on a purpose-built quarantine centre at either Jandakot or Perth airports, the Commonwealth would manage and fund construction of the facility.

Mr Morrison said the reduced overseas arrivals cap would be in place until at least the start of 2022 but be under regular review. The Federal Government will attempt to make-up for some of this reduction by sending more repatriation flights to the Howard Springs quarantine camp near Darwin.

The PM said Australia would moved the “post vaccination phase” once every Australian had been offered a vaccine and measures may include easing local restrictions on vaccinated residents. The third stage would see COVID-19 managed like other infectious diseases like the flu, abolishing the cap on returning vaccinated travellers and allowing more visa holders into the country.

The final stage would see a return to normal, including uncapped arrivals for all vaccinated people without the need to quarantine and allowing uncapped arrivals for non-vaccinated people subject to pre-flight and arrival testing.

“What it means is Australia gets vaccinated, Australia is able to live differently,” Mr Morrison said.

“Winning in the post-vaccination phase looks very different to winning in the phase we’re in how. Winning now means we suppress the virus as best we can, which means that from time to time, such as we’re experiencing in NSW, we have to go through these experiences.”