Sydney Airport Officially Says Goodbye To COVID-19

Australia’s largest airport and international gateway to the nation, Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport will soon bid a longstanding ally farewell, although it will be rather happy to see this one gone. Sydney Airport’s COVID-19 testing clinic will swab its final passengers tomorrow, marking the end of an era we would all rather forget.

It’s time to take the shingle down

Since the airport clinic opened it has tested more than 500,000 passengers, completing either a PCR or RAT test depending on where they were headed or arriving from. Sydney Airport chief operations officer Sidone Thomas said:

“The testing clinic played a vital role in bringing air travel back and we are grateful to Histopath for providing this essential service for the last two and a half years. With restrictions and testing requirements now all but gone, confidence in travel is strong again. Our T1 international terminal is humming with passenger numbers now edging closer to pre-pandemic levels.”

In April, Sydney Airport processed just over 3 million passengers, of which 1.96 million were traveling domestically and 1.1 million on international services, 84% of pre-COVID numbers. International traffic is rapidly bouncing back, with more than double the number of travelers compared to April last year, and passengers from China already at 50% of pre-COVID levels, despite the border only fully reopening in March.

By the end of April, seven mainland Chinese carriers were operating 30 return services weekly from Sydney Airport, compared to just three airlines flying four return services weekly at the start of this year.

In May, Singapore Airlines added a second Airbus A380 daily service and now is flying four times a day to Singapore; Asiana Airlines is increasing flights to Seoul to nine per week and from October, United Airlines will operate two daily flights to San Francisco.

The clinic kept the doors open

The airport set up the on-the-spot testing clinic in December 2020 at the request of the South Eastern Sydney Local Health District to test departing and arriving passengers. As stricter travel rules were implemented, the demand for COVID tests grew exponentially, so Sydney Airport built a dedicated testing facility across the road from departures at the T1 International terminal.

The dedicated facility could do tests on the same day of travel, and passengers could be tested immediately before checking in for their flight. The center, operated by Histopath Diagnostic Services, saw the highest demand during last year’s Easter school holiday rush when almost 60,000 passengers were tested during April.

During the busiest days of the pandemic, the airport facility needed a team of more than 40 staff, including nurses, laboratory staff and liaisons to keep up with demand. However, that demand tailed off over the last twelve months as more and more countries dropped the requirement for passengers to produce evidence of a negative COVID test on arrival.

The last domino to fall was China, which dropped the mandatory testing requirement in April, spelling the end for the clinic that had helped the airport get through the pandemic chaos. It is going out with a whimper rather than a bang, as lately, just a handful of people have been coming through the doors.

Were you tested at the Sydney Airport COVID-19 clinic? Let us know in the comments.