Testing on departure:
- should have been implemented at least 6 months ago when widespread testing became available. I know it doesn’t guarantee no positive cases would arrive, but what it does do is provide a “first stage” filter to the system. At the very least it would reduce the number of positive cases in quarantine in Australia.
So what happens to the people who show a negative test prior to departure? Do they get released into the wild on arrival as if it was a Green flight? It would be a hard sell to expect them to pay for 14 days of quarantine when they just proved to you they don't have the disease. If it doesn't guarantee that no cases will get in, you may as well just take all the ones coming back and quarantine them anyway. In the great scheme of things, the number of positive cases in quarantine vs the number of people rotating through quarantine is 4/5ths of f*ck all (in QLD currently 21 out of 3975 people in active quarantine). Make the system that contains them work, and welcome back!
surprised how relaxed some of the border staff have been greeting international flights. Regularly saw no masks, no clear plastic barriers on desks, etc.
And yet with the hundreds of thousands of returned travelers since March, practically no Border staff have contracted COVID, even with their lax protocols. Funny that.