Qantas COVID vaccine rule slammed by World Travel and Tourism Council

Qantas plans to make vaccination mandatory on overseas flights in the future. But one of the world’s leading travel authorities has a big problem.

One of the world’s leading travel authorities says it disagrees with any plan to make COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for international travel, saying it would be discriminatory.

Qantas boss Alan Joyce made international headlines in December when he said proof of vaccination would be a requirement for all international passengers with Qantas in the future, and the move was likely to be adopted by other airlines around the world.

Vaccination has been touted by many as the key to bringing down closed borders and resuming international movement.

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But in a Reuters panel discussion with health experts and tourism authorities on Monday, World Travel and Trade Council (WTTC) chief executive Gloria Guevara said she “disagree(d) with the approach from Qantas”.

“We should never require the vaccination to get a job or to travel,” she said.

“If you require the vaccination before travel, that takes us to discrimination.”

The WTTC, which accounts for about 10 per cent of travel jobs worldwide, has called for a global testing strategy to replace quarantines worldwide and unlock international travel.

The International Air Transport Association has also been calling for a global testing strategy to replace quarantines and restart travel as soon as possible, The Washington Post reports.

Qantas says it plans to make vaccination mandatory for international passengers. Picture: Christian Gilles /NCA NewsWire

Health experts told the Reuters panel even though mass vaccination programs were underway in many countries, including the United States and United Kingdom, herd immunity was unlikely to be achieved in 2021.

“We won’t get back to normal quickly,” Dale Fisher, chairman of the World Health Organisation’s Outbreak Alert and Response Network, said.

“We know we need to get to herd immunity and we need that in a majority of countries, so we are not going to see that in 2021. There might be some countries that might achieve it but even then that will not create ‘normal’ especially in terms of border controls.”

Meanwhile in Australia, experts have also cast doubt on whether the vaccine will suddenly unlock international travel as hoped.

Peter Collignon, a professor of infectious diseases at Australian National University’s Medical School, told the ABC while travel to places such as the UK was “not completely off the cards” in 2021, hotel quarantine would likely stick around.

An electronic information display board shows the ‘cancelled’ status of flights from London Heathrow as the world bans UK flights amid the spread of the new UK virus strain. Picture: Niklas Halle'n/AFP

He said that was because the vaccine was not 100 per cent effective.

“Look at London at the moment, one in 30 people have the virus and probably two in 100 coming back have it when they arrive in Australia,” he told News Breakfast on Tuesday.

“If you have a vaccine that is 90 per cent effective, you still have two in 1000 people who will come back with the virus, even if they’re vaccinated and go to those areas. That is the level of the virus we had in Melbourne in its height last winter when there was a lot of virus circulating around.

“While there is a lot of virus circulating in a lot of places overseas, if we go there and we are vaccinated, there is still a risk you can carry the virus when you come back and you will maybe be asymptomatic, so we will need restrictions on people coming back from high prevalence areas even if they are vaccinated, until we get more data.

“But the current information is you are still a risk.”