Australia has reopened borders to vaccinated skilled migrants and foreign students after a nearly two-year ban on their entry, in a bid to boost an economy hit by stop-start Covid-19 lockdowns and restart international travel.

The emergence of the new Omicron variant forced officials to delay the reopening by two weeks after health officials sought a temporary pause to get more information about the strain, which so far appears to show milder symptoms than other Covid-19 variants, according to a Reuters report.

“We're going to live with this virus, and we're not going to let it drag us back to where we've been,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison told radio station 4BC. “We've got one of the highest vaccination rates, which means we can fight this thing. We don't have to surrender to it.”