A Year After Covid-19 Emerged, Australians Still Can’t Get Home

SYDNEY—Amilia Wallace and her partner, Bonnie Miller, spent their Christmas in Scotland worrying whether they would make it back to Australia in time to see a gravely ill parent, potentially for the last time.

Quarantine in Australia and the price of their air tickets totaled around $12,000. Flights are often canceled. Recently, a new variant of the coronavirus led governments including Singapore and Hong Kong to ban travelers from the U.K. from transiting through their airports.

Ms. Wallace, 33, and Ms. Miller decided they had no choice but to absorb the travel costs and to bring forward their flights to late January from March. The pair must spend 14 days in hotel quarantine on arrival in Australia.

“The idea that we could miss seeing a family member due to the situation would be something we would always regret,” she said.

Australia’s remote location, backed up by some of the strictest border controls in the world, has helped it avoid the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, with some 28,500 confirmed cases compared with more than 21 million infections reported in the U.S. But that success has come at a steep economic and personal cost. Nearly a year after detecting its first coronavirus case, Australia is struggling to bring its citizens back home.

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