The lifting of the travel ban announced at the start of last week for most temporary visa holders has not even commenced before travel bans were reinstated for southern African countries due to the outbreak of a new strain of COVID-19, now dubbed the omicron variant. Some states have reinstituted mandatory quarantine regardless of previously promised quarantine-free arrangements. These arrangements are generally not as severe as the previous 14-days stints.

Updated advice from the Home Affairs’ website states that effective immediately, only Australian citizens, permanent residents and their immediate family members from South Africa, Lesotho, Eswatini, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Seychelles, Mozambique, or Malawi can enter Australia if they have been in one of those countries in the last 14 days. Immediate family members include partners (spouses or de facto) dependent children, and parents (biological, step, legal or in-law) or legal guardians of dependent children.

Regardless of the vaccination status of this cohort, they must enter supervised quarantine for at least 14 days on arrival.

For anyone else including those who hold an eligible temporary visa or travel exemption or could travel under a Safe Travel Zone arrangement are not permitted to enter Australia.

This does not seem, however, to prevent entering Australia if a person was able to stay in a non-prohibited country for 14 days then travel to Australia.

This ban along with reinstituting quarantine arrangements is hoped to be a temporary and precautionary measure to determine the severity of this new strain and is a similar reaction to the delta variant that was believed to have originated in India. Australia instituted a complete travel ban for a time and even for Australian citizens and permanent residents. It did not prevent the delta variant from arriving in Australia.

Tourist travel bubble with Japan and South Korea begins on 1 December 2021

Despite the omicron variant, there has been no change to the planned travel bubble arrangements with Japan and South Korea that begins on 1 December 2021. Fully vaccinated Japanese and South Korean citizens will be able to enter Australia for tourism purposes without a travel exemption or quarantining (subject to emergency provisions as above) provided they enter a participating state or territory if arriving directly from their home countries, among other things.

These two add to the Singapore bubble that commenced on 21 November 2021, and the now one-way travel bubble from New Zealand that recommenced on 1 November 2021.