The Deputy Prime Minister has revealed his Christmas miracle two weeks after testing positive to Covid-19.
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce will be home in time for Christmas, two weeks after he tested positive to Covid-19 while overseas.
Mr Joyce – who is fully vaccinated – was in the United Kingdom when he contracted the highly contagious Omicron strain, but didn’t test positive until he arrived in Washington DC.
He was ordered into ten days of quarantine, being forced to cancel high-level meetings with Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Marsha Blackburn, and other high ranking US officials.
Mr Joyce has been given the all clear to leave his hotel room, and is now finalising plans to get home in time for Christmas.
“To sum up the trip, it could have been better,” he told Sunrise on Monday morning.
“Obviously arriving here and being locked up in a hotel is not the ideal venue for trying to meet people.
“All in all, about three out of ten.”
Mr Joyce, who contracted Omicron, said his symptoms had been “pretty mild”.
“It was a couple of days and then the rest of the time I had the virus, they could find the virus on me, but I didn’t feel sick and that’s one of the frustrations,” he said.
He sought to appeal to Australians with growing concern about Omicron, saying that despite the 75,000 new daily cases in the US, people were “getting on with their lives”.
“I don’t think you can just keep shutting the place down,” he said.
“Australia is vastly more prepared than the United States … Let’s make sure people get vaccinated and then let’s get on with our lives because that’s the only alternative.
“Otherwise the economy cannot just keep shutting things down, you will go broke.”
Source: News AU