Australia Asks Kanye West To Get Vaccinated Against COVID-19 Before Concert, PM Morrison: It Applies To Everyone

Kanye West. (Wikimedia Commons/Shahril Affandi Radzali)

JAKARTA - Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, said hip-hop singer Kanye West must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 if he wants to perform in the country after the media said the artist was planning a tour of Australia next March.

The warning comes just two weeks after tennis superstar Novak Djokovic's hopes of a Grand Slam title were dashed when a court upheld the government's decision to cancel his visa over COVID-19 rules because he was not vaccinated.

"The rule is you have to be fully vaccinated", PM Morrison said at a news conference, citing Reuters on January 29.

"It applies to everyone, as people have seen recently. It doesn't matter who you are, those are the rules. Follow the rules, you can come. You don't follow the rules, you can't."

Morrison's remarks follow a report Friday in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, citing industry sources, who said West planned to play a stadium concert in Australia in March.

Representatives for West, who released her latest album, "Donda", in July, could not be reached for comment. Meanwhile, the vaccination status of West, the 2020 US presidential candidate, is unknown.

In a 2021 interview on social media West said he had received one dose of the vaccine. But in a 2020 interview with business magazine Forbes, he called getting vaccinated the 'mark of the beast'.

To note, Australia, one of the countries most heavily vaccinated against COVID-19, has been battling an explosive wave of infections in the past month driven by the fast-spreading Omicron variant, with around 2 million cases recorded.

Previously, the Kangaroo Country had only 400,000 cases since the pandemic first hit almost two years ago. On Saturday, 97 people died, after Friday's pandemic record 98 deaths. Health officials in several states said, however, that hospital admissions were unstable or showing signs of decline.