Australian Government Requires Booster Dose For Its Citizens, Foreign Tourists Enough Two Doses

Illustration of a COVID-19 vaccination. (Wikimedia Commons/Phil Roeder)

JAKARTA - Australian residents need to receive a booster dose injection to be considered fully vaccinated against COVID-19, although authorities say foreign travelers need only two doses to enter the country.

Australia's national cabinet late Thursday passed revised guidelines from the country's vaccination advisory group, to classify 'recent' inoculations as including boosters.

A person's vaccination status will be considered 'late' if they have not received a booster within six months of the second dose, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.

Australian officials have made vaccines mandatory for only a few frontline workers, but many private businesses, including large companies, restaurants and retailers, have made inoculation a requirement for entry.

As a result, the country is among the most widely vaccinated in the world, with 94 percent of people over 16 receiving a double dose. Nearly 10 million booster doses have been administered so far.

The decision to maintain the requirement for visitors for two doses, comes as authorities prepare to fully reopen Australia's borders, some two years after they were closed to slow the progress of the pandemic.

Like other countries, Kangaroo Country moved quickly to tackle the more contagious and rapidly spreading variant of Omicron.

To note, Australian authorities reported fewer than 26,000 new infections as of Friday afternoon, down from around 30,000 on Thursday, with Western Australia and the Northern Territory still reporting.

Meanwhile, forty-eight new deaths were registered. Hospital cases remained on a downward trend, with nearly 3,300 treated, the lowest tally in more than a month.

In total since the Australian pandemic around 2.7 million cases of infection have been detected, with the death toll standing at 4,479.