International travel and the vaccine: how will it all work?

Alan Joyce has been pilloried by politicians and some “experts” for taking international bookings from July 1. He has also said that all international passengers will need to be vaccinated, so he seems to have expectations that enough people will be vaccinated by July to allow international travel to restart.

Some in the medical profession have said that vaccinated returning travellers may still have to undergo 14 days in hotel quarantine as the effectiveness of vaccines in preventing asymptomatic transmission to others is not known. This would effectively prevent travellers leaving the country in any significant numbers, as there would not be enough hotel quarantine beds on their return.

Other medical experts are confident that vaccines will significantly reduce or eliminate the risk of transmission.

As we have put all of our hopes in vaccines to allow a return to normal life, and international travel is part of that return to normality, we must find a way to move forward.

There is no way of eliminating risk totally, but vaccination plus testing before and after travel would seem to offer an extremely low risk of the virus being brought back into the Australian community by travellers. As a further layer of security, I’m sure that travellers would be prepared to undertake a period of self-isolation at home in the short term.

Ian Wade, Teneriffe, Qld

Now is the time for accountable evidence-based vaccination policy. In 2021, 10 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will arrive. Qantas has announced all international passengers need a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine before being permitted to board. Any delay in the second vaccine dose beyond the interval used in phase three trials is entirely outside the evidence base in terms of efficacy. If, as is occurring in the UK right now, people do not receive their second dose at a time aligned with the evidence, then won't they be a perpetual risk for a planeload of people packed together for up to 15 hours?

I trust our national vaccination policy not only stratifies access according to risk and benefit but also guarantees second-dose delivery to everyone according to the evidence. Now is not the time for shortchanging the science.

Dr Jeanette Ward, Broome, WA

The risks with the Sydney Test are too great and holding it is a kick in the guts to all those hardworking, strained healthcare workers who have been tirelessly working through COVD. This is not the time for crowds or mixing of people

Stuart Davie, Corowa, NSW

QR code phone check-ins will be with us for at least another year. I have tried five app versions and all are pretty hopeless — basically commercial operations that aim to hit the user with advertising and gain personal information. One version would not let me proceed without consenting to it having access to my contacts and photos.

We need a government-approved app that guarantees privacy, is basically just “aim and click” and which pre-emptively fills out the contact information. The whole process should not take more than two seconds. I am moderately tech-savvy and yet I find that the process is fiddly and frustrating.

Over to the Commonwealth to set up a standardised system.

Roger Mendelson, Toorak, Vic

Nuclear option

I am afraid that Doug Hurst’s worthy call for an impartial inquiry into energy policy (Letters, 7/1) is politically doomed. In 2019, we had federal and NSW parliamentary inquiries into nuclear power that both recommended lifting the prohibition (conditionally at the federal level), but the governments took no action.

My federal MP (Liberal) told me that it would require bipartisan support, which is not there. I am sure that many MPs, even some in Labor, are pro-nuclear, but fear losing their seats to an opportunistic independent, a Green or a left-wing member of the ALP if they were to say so in public; so the governments of Australia and NSW try to avoid even talking about it.

My state MP seems to have been vaccinated against reality and subscribes to the fantasy of 100 per cent renewables, so there is no point in appealing to any better side that his nature might have.

Don Higson, Paddington, NSW

It was encouraging to see a mention of nuclear in your editorial “Energy Security Board lifts red flag on renewables” (6/1). Unfortunately, successive governments, both federal and state, have been unwilling to recognise the two main advantages of nuclear generation. It is emissions free and provides base power reliability, at present provided by the much-maligned coal-fired power stations.

Until these advantages sink in, we will continue to have the chaotic mishmash of dubious renewables.

Nick Watling, Smithfield., Qld