AUSTRALIAN airline Qantas will require travelers on international flights to have had the coronavirus vaccine once an inoculation is ready, CEO Alan Joyce said.
He told Australian news programme A Current Affair: “Whether you need that domestically, we’ll have to see what happens with COVID-19 in the market, but certainly for international visitors coming out and people leaving the country, we think that’s a necessity.”
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Australia’s largest airline is planning to enshrine the mandate in its terms and conditions, which would be amended to say that international travelers must be vaccinated before they can board a Qantas plane.
Other airlines are likely to impose similar requirements once health regulators around the world approve a vaccine, according to Joyce.
He said the policies could be enforced by providing travelers with a digital “vaccination passport” that shows what vaccine they’ve received and whether it’s “acceptable to the country you’re traveling to.”
He added: “I’m talking to my colleagues in other airlines around the globe and I think its going to be a common theme across the board.
“There’s a lot of logistics, a lot of technology that’ll be needed to put in place to make this happen, but the airlines and the governments are working on this as we speak.”
Joyce revealed the plans as drugmakers made significant progress toward developing a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine, which is considered key to helping airlines and other beaten-down industries recover from the pandemic.
Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca have all said their experimental shots are highly effective.
Oxford’s coronavirus vaccine can stop up to 90 per cent of people from getting the disease, late-stage findings have today revealed.
Britain has pre-ordered 100 million doses of the jab – which is expected to cost just £2 a time and can be stored at standard temperatures – with four million ready to be rolled out as soon as it gets regulatory approval.
The Oxford/AstraZeneca jab is cheaper and easier to distribute than the US’s Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which both revealed similarly promising results of around 95 per cent effectiveness last week.
It has also been shown to work in different age groups, including the elderly, and there were no hospitalised or severe cases in anyone who received the jab.
A version of this article was originally published on the New York Post and has been reproduced with permission.