One Question Quiz
The border will reopen for New Zealanders on the weekend. (Getty Images)
The border will reopen for New Zealanders on the weekend. (Getty Images)

The BulletinMarch 1, 2022

Border fully reopens to New Zealanders from Saturday

The border will reopen for New Zealanders on the weekend. (Getty Images)
The border will reopen for New Zealanders on the weekend. (Getty Images)

With little risk of worsening the omicron wave, border restrictions are dropping ahead of schedule, Justin Giovannetti writes in The Bulletin.

New Zealanders can travel home from anywhere in the world on Saturday without self-isolation on arrival. Almost two years after the border was slammed shut with managed-isolation, it’s now opening again. Unfortunately, we’re not reopening to a world that has beaten back the pandemic, but one where New Zealand now has one of the world’s highest transmission rates. As the prime minister explained yesterday, with over 14,000 daily cases being reported within the country, MIQ has largely served its purpose. As The Spinoff’s live updates reports, the decision was made on the advice of David Skegg and his independent committee of scientists.

For a government whose Covid response has been marked by caution, this change came rapidly. Skegg’s group was asked for recommendations on the border settings last Wednesday, cabinet received them Sunday and voted to adopt them yesterday. By the end of this week, they’ll be in place. As Stuff writes, there will still be restrictions. Travellers need to be double-vaccinated, produce a negative pre-departure test and then another on arrival. Dropping self-isolation is expected to only add dozens of cases a week.

There’s a possibility this opening won’t be permanent. A third test will be required from arrivals about five days after arrival. Any person who tests positive will then have a full PCR follow up test. The result will also have its genome mapped. That will keep tabs on any new variants entering the country. That last point is critical and shows that this reopening is always up for review. “Personally, I’ll be surprised if we are still talking about the omicron variant at the end of the year,” said Skegg. If a nastier, more transmissible variant comes along, the border could be closed again. MIQ isn’t going anywhere.

The tourism industry wants a clearer reopening plan. Cabinet will be considering in the coming weeks whether to move forward the full reopening of the country, currently scheduled for July and October depending on where a tourist is coming from. “The tourism industry’s priority is the reopening of our borders to vaccinated international leisure and business travellers,” Tourism Industry Aotearoa’s Ann-Marie Johnson said in a statement. The prime minister warned that it’s unclear when tourism demand will pick up in a pandemic world and domestic travellers should remain a priority for some time. The Guardian reports that Australia’s tourism operators have reported a slow start and expect that it’ll be a year before their business recovers.

The Spinoff’s Covid data tracker has the latest figures.

Keep going!