Coronavirus: Australia orders citizens not to travel abroad in unprecedented move to fight outbreak
- Scott Morrison announces ‘indefinite ban’ on foreign travel alongside crackdown on indoor gatherings of more than 100 people
- Measures will last at least six months, prime minister warns, calling epidemic a ‘once-in-100-year type event’
Australia ordered its citizens Wednesday to halt all overseas travel in an unprecedented move designed to choke off the spread of the coronavirus epidemic.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced at a press conference what he called an “indefinite ban” on foreign travel alongside a crackdown on indoor gatherings in Australia of more than 100 people.
“This is a once-in-100-year type event,” Morrison said of the pandemic. “We haven’t seen this sort of thing in Australia since the end of the first world war.”
“We are going to keep Australia running, we are going to keep Australia functioning, [but] it won’t look like it normally does,” he said, warning that the measures being taken would last at least six months.
Australia has so far recorded more than 450 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with the numbers escalating daily. There have so far been just five fatalities.
Morrison rejected calls for the government to order schools to close, as has been done in other countries, saying the impact on society and the economy from such a closure would be “severe”.
