Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a major change to Covid-19 isolation rules for all Australian states and territories. From October 14, anyone testing positive for Covid-19 will no longer have to isolate.
The change was unanimously agreed to at the national cabinet meeting today, which included all premiers and chief ministers.
Speaking at a press conference, Albanese said he wanted to bring more certainty to all Australians, no matter where they live. “We wanted to make sure we have measures that are proportionate and targeted at the most vulnerable,” he said.
“We want to continue to promote vaccinations as being absolutely critical, including people getting booster shots.”
Pandemic leave disaster payments will also end at that time, except for people in high-risk settings, including aged care, health care and disability care.
Those working in health or aged-care settings will still need to isolate for five days if they test positive for Covid-19, however all others are exempt from isolating.
Chief medical officer Paul Kelly said the new rules are a “context-specific and timing-specific set of recommendations”. He stressed that the change recognises Australia is in a low-community-transmission phase of the pandemic, but that “it does not in any way suggest that the pandemic is finished”.
“We will almost certainly see future peaks of the virus into the future, as we have seen earlier in this year,” said Kelly. “However, at the moment we have very low rates of both cases, hospitalisations, intensive-care admissions, aged-care outbreaks and various other measures that we have been following very closely in our weekly open report.”
