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Australia imposes the restriction on non-resident citizens when leaving the country

Australia has extended restrictions on leaving the country implemented by the pandemic to its nationals who live abroad and are visiting and who will now have to provide “convincing reasons” to the authorities to allow them to leave the territory.

Australia, which closed its borders in March 2020 and does not plan to open them until mid-2022, prohibits its citizens and permanent residents from traveling abroad, although until now it maintained an automatic exception for those nationals who resided in other countries.

The amendment to the Biosafety Law, which will enter into force on August 11, it requires the citizen living abroad to “show that he has compelling reasons that he needs to leave Australian territory”.

The authorities consider that this amendment will reduce the pressure on quarantine centers, as well as the risks of contagion of covid-19 and help the return of residents and temporary citizens to the country, according to the document presented to the Legislature by the minister of Health, Greg Hunt.

This measure comes while some 35,000 Australians and permanent residents are registered on the official lists to return to the country, which recently limited the cap on international entries per week to 3,000.

The oceanic country – which allows travel to and from abroad with exemptions for humanitarian, business or national security reasons – obliges all people arriving from abroad to keep two weeks of quarantine in designated centers.

With some 35,400 infections of the covid-19 and 928 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, the oceanic country a growing wave of cases linked to the Delta variant has been going through since mid-June of the virus and which has its epicenter in the city of Sydney.

Around 60% of the 25 million inhabitants of the country are currently under quarantine orders affecting, among other populations, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, the three most populous Australian cities.

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