WHO's chief scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan thinks vaccinated travellers could still spread coronavirus.Credit:AP
WHO's chief scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan told a virtual press conference that there was no evidence yet that people who had been vaccinated could enter countries such as Australia without the risk of spreading the disease.
Asked byThe Sydney Morning Herald andThe Age what this would mean for Australia's quarantine program,Swaminathan said"I don't believe we have the evidence on any of the vaccines to be confident that it's going to prevent people from actually getting the infection and therefore being able to pass it on".
"We need to assume that people who have been vaccinated also need to take the same precautions till there's a certain level of herd immunity. This is a dynamic in an evolving field."
Australia's stated goal is to suppress all community transmission. Several states,including Victoria,which went into a harsh three-month lockdown earlier this year,have eliminated the virus,recording no new cases for consecutive weeks.
New South Wales has imposed localised restrictions as it races to curb an outbreak first detected in the week before Christmas.
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