Australia will immediately provide 8,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses and critical health equipments to Papua New Guinea (PNG) due to the spike in new coronavirus infections in the country, prime minister Scott Morrison said on Wednesday.
It will also request AstraZeneca and European authorities to grant access to one million doses of the country’s contracted vaccines for PNG, Morrison said.
Australia will also suspend all charter flights for two weeks from Wednesday midnight and outbound travel to the country, the prime minister said:
“We’ll be suspending all charter flights from Papua New Guinea to Australia, with limited exemptions for medevac and other critical flights.
We’ll be reducing passenger caps by one-quarter from flights from Port Moresby to Brisbane, effective at midnight tonight.
We’ll be suspending all outbound travel exemptions by Australians to Papua New Guinea, except for essential and critical workers, including humanitarian and medevac-related…