The Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced a national COVID-19 vaccination target of 70 per cent will be required for Australia to start to ease debilitating pandemic restrictions.
Mr Morrison says the Commonwealth, state and territory leaders have "agreed in principle" to a plan and the targets for a four-stage plan roadmap out of COVID. Australia is still under "Phase A" or suppression stage of the roadmap.
The next stage is "Phase B" which triggers the easing of restrictions and the newly agreed target is 70 per cent of eligible people.
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The whole country needs to reach that target as well as all the states individually.
The target needed for the next stage, "Phase C" - where vaccinated residents will have no restrictions and vaccinated Australians can travel overseas - is 80 per cent.
Mr Morrison says Australia will reopen with caution.
"We don't go from shut one day, open the next. That is a very, in our view, dangerous path," he said.
"What we need to do is take steps towards that, sensible, cautious steps, we get to 70 per cent.
"So let's get there and then we get to 80 per cent and we make that work and then we get to the next level."
There is no timeline or timeframe for this plan.
The Prime Minister has deferred to the Australian people, although it is expected at current rates of vaccination it is still some time away.
"We haven't put timelines on this because the timelines are now in the hands of all Australians together with state and territory governments and the federal government," Mr Morrison said.
The Prime Minister also said the states have agreed that, "no state ... was required to increase restrictions beyond where they are right now."
National cabinet has been reviewing scientific and economic modelling to assess exactly when Australia can dispense with lockdowns and other restrictions. The Doherty Institute was commissioned several weeks ago as part of a four-stage plan to reopen Australia and return to some form of normality.
Treasury did its its own economic modelling which was also presented to national cabinet.
It comes as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reveals disturbing new information on the danger of the Delta variant which is spreading in Sydney.
An internal CDC slide presentation, first obtained by The Washington Post, urges the agency to "acknowledge that the war has changed," showing that Delta could be as contagious as chicken pox and more easily spread than the common cold, the 1918 flu and small pox.
The variant, according to the CDC, also likely increases the risk of severe disease and hospitalisation over the original COVID-19 strain.
