Time
The 2022 Australian Open this month was meant to be Australia’s grand re-opening party following nearly two years of COVID-19 border controls that were so tough the country was compared to North Korea.
But that re-opening has been predicated on one thing—COVID-19 vaccinations. Australia cast off most border and social distancing restrictions after hitting benchmarks for vaccination. Australia was late to roll out vaccines, but it now has one of the highest levels vaccination rates in the world, with 92% of people over age 16 fully vaccinated. Proof of vaccination is required for entry into Australia.
This perhaps explains the public fury when Novak Djokovic, the world no. 1 men’s player and a noted vaccine skeptic, announced last week that he’d received an exemption to travel to Melbourne to defend his Australian Open title.
But what happened next caused chaos, and even more anger. After the Serbian tennis star landed on Jan. 5, he was denied entry to Australia and told to leave the country following a 10-hour standoff with officials at Melbourne airport over the legitimacy of his vaccination exemption. But, he stayed to mount a legal challenge. On Monday, an Australian judge reinstated Djokovic’s visa, saying the Djokovic hadn’t had enough time to speak with his lawyers before the decision was made.
Despite the high vaccination rate in Australia, anger and anxiety over COVID-19 are running high as the country faces an Omicron-driven explosion in case numbers, with hospital resources and testing facilities stretched.
For two years, strict lockdowns and border policies mostly kept COVID-19 under control; caps on international arrivals prevented tens of thousands of Australians from returning from overseas during the pandemic, earning the country the nickname “Fortress Australia.” By some estimates, Melbourne—host city of the Open…
