Australians Will Start Using Vaccine Passports in October, So See Ya!

But borders aren’t set to open for a long while.

Thanks to a report by the Sydney Morning Herald, it looks like Aussies will be ready to catch international flights with a COVID-19 vaccine passport by as early as next month.

The new document is set to be available either as a printed copy (boring) or on your phone, kind of like accessing your debit card in your wallet app.

On top of this, the federal government have hinted about collaborating with state governments to integrate the vaccine passports with check-in apps, so that we can QR scan into a venue and confirm our vax status at the same time—nifty!

Although this is huge news, it’s not quite the return to normalcy that you might expect. Just ‘cos the government is ready to dish out vaccine passports, it does not mean that they’re ready to open up international borders just yet.

So far, the government has promised that we won’t see borders re-open until Australia hits a full vaccination rate of at least 80 per cent.

At the time of writing, only 40.4 per cent of Aussies are fully vaxxed, so the 80 per cent mark is still a few months away.

Because the passport rollout is happening real soon, the federal government are also in talks with other countries about what travel bubble arrangements can be made. So, some borders could potentially re-open for specific countries.

“For people to be able to leave the country if they’re vaccinated and return, to lift the caps on airports, for people returning back from overseas, home quarantine needs to be at scale and needs to be tested and ready,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison told Sky News on Tuesday.

Home quarantine is currently being tested out in South Australia, which will hopefully expand to the rest of the country real soon.

Right now, anyone who is travelling to Australia must undertake a mandatory two-week hotel quarantine regardless of vaccination status, but with more people jabbed, the higher chance it will be for people to avoid the hotel part.

If you’re stressed or annoyed about having to get vaxxed to be able to travel, you might not remember, but it was pretty much the case before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

There were (and still are) plenty of places that require you to be immunised against typhoid, rabies, hepatitis A and B, or even chickenpox before you can hitch a flight.

Plus, vaccine certificates or documentation has been around for specific countries for yonks, so it’s nothing new, just an extra doc that’ll get you out into the rest of the world sooner.

If you wanna check your current immunisation history to keep up to date, you can find it by setting up your myGov account and accessing your Medicare online account.

Also, if you haven’t yet booked ya jab and you wanna get flying soon, you can find a local clinic and get it sorted here.