Australia to end COVID-19 mandatory isolation requirements on Oct. 14

ANKARA (AA) – Australia announced on Friday that the COVID-19 mandatory isolation requirements will end on October 14.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made the announcement after a decision made at a cabinet meeting chaired by him, according to an official statement.

"First Ministers agreed to end mandatory isolation requirements for COVID-19 effective 14 October, with each jurisdiction implementing the change via relevant public health legislation," the Prime Minister's office said in the statement.

The cabinet also agreed to terminate the Pandemic Leave Disaster Payment on the same date.

The financial assistance will, however, continue to be available to casual workers in aged care, disability care, Aboriginal health care, and hospital care.

Later, during a news conference in the capital Canberra, Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said the pandemic is not over and that future peaks of the virus, as seen in Australia earlier this year, are possible.

"We are in a very low community transmission phase of the pandemic here in Australia," he said, adding that this in no way implies that the pandemic is over.

“However, at the moment, we have very low rates of both cases, hospitalizations, intensive care admissions, aged-care outbreaks and various other measures that we have been following very closely in our weekly open report," he told reporters.

*Writing by Islamuddin Sajid