Coronavirus Australia: Hotel quarantine ‘could be cut to eight days’

The standard 14-day mandatory quarantine to stop the coronavirus from entering Australia could safely be cut to eight or nine days for international arrivals from lower-risk nations.

Passengers arrive at Brisbane airport last week. Picture: Dan Peled

The standard 14-day mandatory quarantine to stop the coronavirus from entering Australia could safely be cut to eight or nine days for international arrivals from lower-risk nations, boosting travel and adding about $86bn a year to national income.

Mandatory quarantine for travellers from very low-risk ­nations, such as New Zealand and Thailand, based on their corona­virus loads, could be slashed to zero, according to new research by Andrew Forrest’s Minderoo Foundation and the Burnet Institute of medical research.

“Australia could quickly, safely and sensibly manage the reopening of our interstate and inter­national borders — turbocharging the nation’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 recession,” said Minderoo’s COVID-19 response lead Steve Burnell.

“Universal 14-day quarantine is an outdated, one-size-fits-all ­approach that is adversely impacting the Australian economy and countless people’s lives.”

Since March, international ­arrivals, and some domestic travellers between Australian states, have had to quarantine in hotels for 14 days to ensure they had not been infected with the coronavirus before returning to the community. States have charged up to $3000 per adult for 14 days’ quarantine.

“That would all change under a risk-based quarantine strategy. Even at today’s travel volumes, the number of days spent in managed hotel quarantine required could be reduced by up to 49,000 per month,” Dr Burnell said.

What the researchers call a “traqQ” risk-based model requires testing at the beginning of travel and two tests for coronavirus at the end of the quarantine on return, regardless of the duration.

“Such enhanced testing, when combined with a seven-day quarantine, reduces the risk that individuals remain infectious post-release by a third,” Dr Burnell said.

Nations would be put into one of five risk buckets from low to very high, based on the prevalence of COVID-19 and the level of testing, which would then determine the required level of quarantine. ­Europe and the US, which are facing a second wave of the virus, would be classified as very high risk.

All states and territories were classified as “very low risk”, implying there wasn’t a need for any quarantine period among them.

The low-risk category, requiring a seven-day quarantine, would include Cuba, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Togo, based on current trends.

Fourteen days after exposure to coronavirus, about 27 per cent of cases remain infectious, the ­research assumed.

The report emerged as Victorian health officials on Monday said masks would be mandatory to wear outside through the summer.

The international border is ­expected to be effectively shut for travel not approved by the government until the middle of next year, although Australia and New Zealand have said they will work ­towards a travel “bubble”.

NSW and Victoria are expected to open their border to travel without quarantine later this month.

Arrivals to Australia in May and June were down 99 per cent compared with the same period last year. The $86bn benefit is based on a resumption of 2019 travel volumes.

Over the three months to July, 598 coronavirus cases were detected from 61,500 arrivals, or slightly fewer than 1 per cent.

The Australian understand the 96-page report will be sent to various federal and state chief health officers and health ministers.