Australia says 'no' to tennis stars amid calls for quarantine change

SYDNEY: Australian authorities said mandatory hotel quarantine for people arriving for the Australian Open tennis tournament was essential to stop COVID-19, as the country recorded another day with no new locally acquired cases on Tuesday.

Some of the world's top tennis players including world No. 1 Novak Djokovic have questioned the country's enforced 14-day hotel quarantine, suggesting they should be allowed to complete the process in accommodation with tennis courts before the tournament which starts in Victoria state on Feb. 8.

But Victorian premier Daniel Andrews said he would not make changes.

"People are free to ask for things, but the answer is no," Andrews told reporters in a televised news conference.

"They knew what they were travelling into and we are not cutting corners or making special arrangements."

More than 70 players and their entourage are confined to their hotel rooms after passengers on three charter flights returned positive tests for the coronavirus. Victoria recorded four new cases in hotel quarantine on Tuesday, but these are not counted as community transmissions.

Andrews came under substantial pressure in 2020 after putting the country's second-most populous state into a months-long lockdown to fight a second wave of infections of the new coronavirus.

In neighbouring New South Wales state, Hollywood actor Matt Damon was granted an exemption from hotel quarantine after arriving to film a "Thor" sequel in Sydney.

Damon flew in on a private jet, will stay in a rented house under security and pay for hospital-grade cleaning for his 14-day quarantine, a doctor involved in his quarantine was quoted saying in local media.

As Australia's hardline border controls keep daily numbers of new coronavirus cases at zero or low single digits, tourism operators have called for additional subsidies after health authorities suggested the country would not fully reopen its borders in 2021.

"There's a larger issue to do with the strategic survival of the industry," Tourism and Transport Forum CEO Margy Osmond told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

If the industry did not receive an extension of federal wage subsidies that are due to end in March, "we'll be lucky to have a tourism industry in 12 or 18 months' time", she added.