I figured that I may as well jump on the Coronavirus bandwagon and talk about it as well. First a bit of background, Australia is a country with almost all of its people coming from every part of the world. Hundreds of thousands of new immigrants decided to settle in the country every year. What this means is that people in Australia very often have a strong connection with their home country and travelling oversea is very common. The fun part is that if hosting any sports competition with any random countries, you will liable to find a good supporting crowd. The bad part is that with an outbreak like Coronavirus in any part of the world, we are likely to see imported cases in Australia as well.
So far in Australia primary and secondary schools had not been affected at all, all schools in every state had been operating as normal. Because prior to the last week, the majority of the known cases are concentrated in China, so Australian government has already banned all traveller that had been in China within the last 14 days that is not a citizen or permanent resident plus immediate family.
There are a lot of students in Australian schools whose family originally come from China, what this means is that many will have visited China during the summer holiday over Christmas. The basic rule that was implemented was that any students returned from China are recommended to stay at home for 14 days before returning to school. With worsening of the situation in other countries, particularly South Korea, Italy and Iran. I will not be surprised that a similar recommendation will be rolled out to students arriving back from other countries as well. Because of the school term had started already, so this should not affect many people until term 2 start in mid to late April.
Because now the Coronavirus had spread to countries like South Korea, Japan, most of Europe and looks to be spreading in the US as well. So I would expect more similar 14 days self-quarantine recommendation will be happening in April. Ironically, we may see a relaxation of travel restriction from China and tighten with many other countries.
So far we do not know how Coronavirus will behave whether it will be like the regular flu that starts to die down when summer comes. If that is not the case, we may eventually see extreme cases of temp school closure. So far we had not seen that happening and the chance of that happening is small as well. However, with the coming of the winter and flu season, we very well may see that extreme scenario happening in parts of Australia.
When it is at the university level, there is a bit of crisis going on right now due to a large number of Chinese students unable to travel to Australia. If this persists any longer it will potentially deal a heavy blow to the Australian Tertiary Education sector. I expect with the pressure mounting and Coronavirus being largely controlled in China, travel restriction for China other than Hubei province will likely be lifted soon. I also expect the recommendation of the 14-day self-quarantine after entry into Australia from China will continue for some time as well.
At the end of the day with Coronavirus spreading to every part of the world, travel restriction with specific countries is increasingly irrelevant. Unless Australia stops all oversea arrivals, it is almost next to impossible to prevent Coronavirus from taking hold locally. What we may end up seeing in the near term are all students that come into the country may be required to stay at home for a 14-day self-quarantine period before attending the school again. Of course, we have no way knowing how severe Coronavirus will impact Australia yet to make any real predictions.
Share this post:
Email This Post
English (Australia) 
简体中文