Covid-19: Kanye West must be fully vaccinated before any concerts, warns Australia

Hip-hop artist Kanye West will have to be fully vaccinated if he wants to play concerts in Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Saturday, after media said the performer planned an Australian tour in March.

The warning comes just two weeks after tennis superstar Novak Djokovic’s hopes for a Grand Slam title were dashed when a court upheld the government’s decision to cancel his visa over Covid-19 rules and his unvaccinated status.

“The rules are you have to be fully vaccinated,” Morrison told a news conference.

“They apply to everybody, as people have seen most recently. It doesn’t matter who you are, they are the rules. Follow the rules - you can come. You don’t follow the rules, you can’t.”

Morrison’s remarks followed a report on Friday in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, citing industry sources, that said West planned to play stadium concerts in Australia in March.

Representatives of West, who released his latest album, “Donda”, in July, were not immediately available for comment.

The vaccination status of West, a 2020 US presidential candidate, is unknown.

In a 2021 interview on social media he said he had received one vaccine dose, but in a 2020 interview with business magazine Forbes, he had called getting vaccinated “the mark of the beast”.