COVID-19 vaccine jabs won’t inject life into air travel just yet

Most Australians should be vaccinated against COVID-19 by the end of October but that’s unlikely to be enough for borders to reopen.

The majority of Australians should be vaccinated against COVID-19 by the end of October but that’s unlikely to mean international borders will reopen. Picture: AFP

The majority of Australians should be vaccinated against COVID-19 by the end of October but that will not be enough for the country to reopen its ­borders.

As international airlines race to get their crews vaccinated in the hope of restoring confidence in travel, acting chief medical ­officer Michael Kidd said there were still many unknowns about the vaccine.

Speaking to the CAPA Centre for Aviation, Professor Kidd said it was known the Pfizer vaccine prevented the development of a serious disease from COVID or death, but not much more.

“We don’t know if you’ve been vaccinated whether you can still be infected with COVID-19, be asymptomatic but still at risk of transmitting COVID to other people,” he said.

“We don’t know how long the immunity which you get from being vaccinated will last.”

He said it would be very much a “wait and see” scenario as vaccinations were rolled out, with everyone over 16 expected to be vaccinated by late October.

“There are still many countries, especially low and middle-income countries, where vaccination has not commenced and where there may still be very large numbers of people who have not been vaccinated come October,” he said. “We don’t know how quickly it’s going to take before we see the situation with transmission of COVID-19 start to improve around the world.”

He agreed it was more ­realistic to expect international travel to resume in 2022 on “a country by country basis” and even then it was likely to look quite different to what it did pre-COVID.

“It may well be that many of the other public health precautions which we’ve had in place will still be required as we travel to different parts of the world,” Professor Kidd said.

“The importance of wearing masks, the importance of our hand hygiene, the importance of maintaining physical distancing.” Until vaccinations were widespread and proven to be effective, 14-day mandatory hotel quarantine was set to remain for any international arrivals, he said.

Etihad Airways on Wednesday became the first airline to say all its flight and cabin crew were vaccinated. Singapore Airlines announced the same on ­Thursday.