Plan to isolate at home

VACCINATED Australians could return from overseas without undergoing hotel quarantine by the end of the year, as the government works on a home isolation system.

Health Minister Greg Hunt on Sunday said home quarantine for returning travellers could be a “pathway to (a) progressive but safe” return to normality after the pandemic.

He said the system could be implemented this year, beginning with vaccinated Australians returning from essential travel. However, he said any time frame would be based on medical advice.

“There is no doubt that this is about progressive opening and progressive opportunities to reduce pressure on hotel quarantine and to provide greater freedoms as we vaccinate more,” Mr Hunt said.

Questions have been raised over how the system would function — and whether it would require measures such as ankle bracelets to ensure compliance.

Mr Hunt said previous home quarantine protocols implemented by states in early 2020 — including random police visits and health department phone calls — had laid a foundation for it to be reintroduced with some tweaks.

“That model exists, that model has been in operation,” he said. “(It’s) always open to refinement, but the Australian states and territories, in conjunction with the Commonwealth, have largely mastered the security side of home quarantine.”

Mr Hunt also said the twoway trans-tasman travel bubble, coming into effect on Monday, was a “significant milestone” in the path towards normality.

The comments came hours after Prime Minister Scott Morrison revealed the federal government was open to quarantining vaccinated travellers at home.

He said it would free up space for more essential workers to arrive.

Mr Morrison will discuss the proposal with state and territory leaders at a national cabinet meeting on Monday, but conceded a “lot of work” was required to have it functional by the end of the year.

Home quarantine would only be implemented if it was as effective as hotel quarantine, according to the Prime Minister.

He said the government was in “no rush” to open its international borders.

“I assure Australians that I will not be putting at risk the way we are living in this country which is so different to the rest of the world today,” he said on Sunday.

“The issues of borders and how they are managed will be done very, very carefully.”

More than 1.4m Australians have now received their vaccine, including 330,533 in the past week.

That number is well behind initial estimates.

Labor health spokesman Mark Butler dismissed the government’s home quarantine intervention as “just another thought bubble” while it scrambled to change the narrative over its sluggish rollout.

“(Mr Morrison) can’t even manage a hotel quarantine system properly.” he said.