• The cap on international travelers allowed into Australia is unlikely to be lifted before mid-February, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said today.
• Australia slashed the number of international arrivals it will accept earlier this month, owing to concerns about a new and highly virulent coronavirus strain.
• Tens of thousands of Australians remain stranded overseas, with some saying tickets on repatriation flights organised by the federal government sold out instantly.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has revealed the cap on incoming international flights won’t be reviewed until mid-February, marking another gut-punch to the estimated 38,000 Australians still trying to return from overseas during the coronavirus pandemic.

Speaking after a National Cabinet meeting on Friday, Morrison confirmed the restrictions on international arrivals will stick around until February 15.

He said changes may come sooner, if individual state and territory leaders agree to the amendments.

“But that is not an indication that that will occur,” he said.

Earlier this month, the National Cabinet signed off on a temporary 50% reduction to the number of international arrivals to New South Wales, Queensland, and Western Australia, in response to a new and highly virulent coronavirus strain.

At the time, Morrison said the move would ease the strain on each state’s hotel quarantine scheme.

But slashing the number of arrivals has caused chaos overseas, with Australians still hoping to return home left with drastically fewer options.

The issue was compounded by international carrier Emirates suspending its flights to Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane last week.

The federal government scheduled 20 repatriation flights after the Emirates news, and confirmed those returning passengers would be counted outside of the new caps.

Yet many Australians hoping to take advantage of the flights were left deeply disappointed, with one Australian stranded in the UK today telling the ABC tickets to those flights sold out almost immediately.

Emirates confirmed overnight that it would resume operations between those cities, offering renewed opportunities for Australians to trek home.

Despite the overwhelming interest in tickets home, Morrison today demurred on the possibility of scheduling even more repatriation flights.

“Our first priority is the health and safety within Australia and then to seek and to bring and support as many Australians seeking to come home as soon as possible,” Morrison said.

“We’ve been able to maintain that.”

Morrison acknowledged the “deterioration of the [coronavirus] situation around the world” had increased interest in flights back to home soil, but reckoned the caps should be maintained on public health grounds — for now.

“That’s why we’re seeking as much capacity as we can,” Morrison said.

“But ultimately that’ll also be conditional upon the quarantine requirements and we have to put the public health and safety within our borders first.”

Morrison said a novel proposal from Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to use mining outposts as coronavirus quarantine areas was informally discussed, but he is yet to see a detailed proposal.

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