Australian Government

The COVID-19 testing requirements for inbound travel to Australia has changed. Rapid tests are now an accepted COVID-19 test type. You are still required to provide evidence of a negative COVID-19 test result taken within 3 days or RAT taken within 24 hours of your flight’s scheduled departure must be provided to your airline when you check-in for your flight.

National Cabinet met today to discuss a response to COVID-19 and the Omicron variant, approaches to test, trace isolate and quarantine including the use of rapid antigen tests (RATs) and the vaccine rollout and booster programme.

The TGA has provisionally approved Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine for use in Australia.

The Novavax vaccine is provisionally approved for primary vaccination only. Studies of the vaccine as a booster dose are ongoing and does not have regulatory approval for these purposes.

The provisional approval is for individuals 18 years of age and older. The vaccine will require two doses to be administered 3 weeks apart.

The first 51 million doses are expected to arrive in the coming month.

The two COVID-19 oral anti-viral treatments have been found to be effective in treating people with mild to moderate COVID-19 who have a high risk of progressing to severe disease, reducing admissions to hospital and ICU and potential death.

As with other TGA approved COVID-19 treatments, not everyone who contracts COVID-19 will require access to these new treatments and will be of most benefit for people most at risk of severe disease and through the oversight from a healthcare professional.

These oral antiviral treatments need a prescription and are taken every 12 hours for five days. They are designed to interfere with the virus’ ability to multiply.