A former World Health Organisation epidemiologist is calling for Australia to shut its borders to overseas travellers immediately.

Professor of biostatistics at the University of South Australia, and former WHO epidemiologist, Professor Adrian Esterman, says no overseas arrivals should be permitted in Australia until our most vulnerable and quarantine workers are vaccinated against COVID-19.

“Our only source now of infection are others coming in from overseas, so if we stop overseas travel there will be no infections,” he told Ross and Russel.

He says using hotels for quarantine is needlessly risky, and Australia needs to set up purpose-built quarantine facilities.

“Hotels were never designed to be quarantine stations, they’re not designed for it architecturally, their ventilation systems aren’t designed for it, and they’re in the middle of cities, which is silly,” he said.

“We’re now a year down the track and we should be thinking of other ways of handling this.

“This isn’t the only epidemic that’s ever going to hit Australia, we’ve got more coming in the future so we should actually have a system built ready for it.”

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