A New Zealand woman has been reunited with her dying sister in Australia after gaining an exemption from pandemic travel restrictions on compassionate grounds.
Australia had rejected Christine Archer's request for permission to fly from New Zealand four times before her story attracted media attention.
Her only sister Gail Baker was diagnosed with incurable ovarian cancer in late March after both countries stopped international travel.
Archer was eventually allowed to fly to Sydney and spent only a week in hotel quarantine before testing negative for the coronavirus. International travelers are usually quarantined for two weeks.
Family friends drove the retired nurse 490 kilometers (300 miles) from Sydney to the New South Wales state coastal town of Bowraville where her younger sibling greeted her with a hug on Wednesday. Archer told Australian Broadcasting Corp. in an interview aired on Thursday: