Mandatory COVID-19 isolation will end on October 14 for everyone, the National Cabinet has decided.
Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly announced on Friday there would be support for some workers in high-risk settings to be able to continue isolation if needed, but everyone else can just carry about their lives as normal if they contract COVID.
The National Cabinet agreed to continue targeted financial support for casual workers to be able to isolate as well as workers in aged care, disability care, Aboriginal health care and hospital care.
Federal sick-leave support payments for people with COVID who are not in those industries will also end from October 14.
BREAKING: National Cabinet has agreed to scrap isolation rules. Mandate will remain for aged care and hospital workers, but other than that- for all intents and purposes- the pandemic is over. No more stay at home orders for people with Covid. @9NewsAUS
— Chris O’Keefe (@cokeefe9) September 30, 2022
State Governments will determine how to implement the change beyond this support and whether they want to offer more support or incentives.
Kelly said there were low rates of COVID transmission in Australia, which meant it was safe to lift one of the last remind COVID restrictions.
“It does not in any way suggest that the pandemic is finished,” he said.
“We will almost certainly see future peaks of the virus into the future, as we have seen earlier in this year.
“However, at the moment, we have very low rates of … cases, hospitalisations, intensive care admissions, aged-care outbreaks and various other measures that we have been following very closely.”
The decision comes a month after the isolation period was reduced from seven to five days, and one day after NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet publicly pushed for the mandate to be removed.
And in case you missed it, last week Victoria joined the other states in canning mask mandates on public transport.
So I guess that’s it, everyone fend for yourselves now!
