The trans-Tasman bubble will remain closed as the government rethinks a month old strategy to reopen Fortress New Zealand, Justin Giovannetti writes in The Bulletin.

Almost a month ago the government unveiled its strategy for reopening the country’s borders. Based on advice from a group chaired by Sir David Skegg, the plan centred on marrying the elimination strategy with welcoming vaccinated travellers. There was a buzz of energy when the prime minister unveiled the “reconnecting framework” and I filed this report at the time. In brief: Starting next year countries would be ranked as low, medium or high risk. Anyone from a low risk country could travel quarantine-free. Those in the middle could undergo modified isolation, while arrivals from high risk countries would undergo a full stint in MIQ.

That plan is now at risk because of the delta variant. Covid-19 response minister Chris Hipkins told parliament on Tuesday evening that the spread of delta has led officials to start making changes to the month-old plan. “We were looking at a situation where you could stratify countries based on risk, and I think in the delta environment, we actually have to consider whether that’s an appropriate thing to do,” he said.

Each person carrying the variant is now a risk, and pre-departure testing is far less useful when someone can go from infected to infectious in a day. As reported in Stuff, the original strategy had been devised at a time when delta was already known. The Skegg group has now been asked to provide the government with new advice.

What does this mean for the trans-Tasman bubble? Under the reopening plan, the prime minister had said Australian states could be ranked on their risk level and travel could eventually begin again with those that were low risk. While some states like New South Wales and Victoria are likely to remain closed for some time, owing to their high levels of delta infection, others like Tasmania have barely seen any cases this year. With the cornerstone of the reopening plan, a risk rating, now in question, I asked Hipkins yesterday what impact it’ll have on any plans to travel across the Tasman.

“It does bring a degree of realism to the timing around discussions of the trans-Tasman bubble,” he said. An announcement on the trans-Tasman bubble is due this month, but Hipkins quickly said people should not make holiday plans. “I think it would be unrealistic to expect there will be speedy decisions in the next few weeks about reopening the trans-Tasman travel bubble.”

“It’s still a while away,” he added. “Don’t hold your breath.”

In the short term, the government is still going ahead with a pilot project for business travellers. This was an area in which the government went far beyond Skegg’s recommendations and, despite the delta outbreak, Hipkins confirmed it’s sticking with the plan. It’ll be a self-quarantine pilot for a few hundred people who are fully vaccinated and going overseas on a short trip to a destination approved by the government. They’ll need the full backing of a business and a rigorous self-quarantine plan that means they’ll be completely alone for a fortnight. Based on restrictions, it seems like it’ll be limited to people who have a granny flat, a bach or those who live alone and don’t share a ventilation system with anyone else.

In the longer term, it’s unclear when mass quarantine-free travel will resume. Speaking in parliament, Hipkins said a border with nearly everyone going through MIQ won’t last beyond the “global response phase of Covid-19, which is obviously, the pandemic is still raging”. He added there will need to be alternatives, including self-isolation and a rethink of the elimination strategy itself “in a world that will increasingly become more highly vaccinated over the next year, 18 months to two years.”

I asked Hipkins if he expects MIQ to last that long. “The current model that we are working to, whilst it might still have an ongoing role, is unlikely to be the only route into the country over the medium and longer term,” he said. He declined to say whether the short term, in his mind, is the next 18 months to two years.

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Meant for international travel, a debate looms for the country on how the passports will be used domestically, Justin Giovannetti writes in The Bulletin.

A vaccine passport is coming. New Zealanders will soon have access to digital proof that they’ve received a Covid-19 vaccination. Colloquially known as a “vaccine passport”, a government-run app will soon be as indispensable as a real passport for international travel. Many countries already require them to sit at a bar or attend a sports game. You can’t climb the Eiffel Tower without one.

Qantas has unveiled plans for a travel passport that will make it easier for flyers to get going without needing to bring other proof of immunisation to the airport. Air New Zealand has said it won’t mandate vaccine passports, but expects clients will keep track of requirements. Proof of vaccination is already a condition of entry for a number of countries around the world. Just as you can’t board many international flights now without the right visa, the vaccine passport will be added to your pre-flight checklist.

What it’ll look like. If you want to travel now to a number of destinations you need to first request a letter from the government attesting to your vaccination status. It’s a significant risk and there are stories of countries turning down the printed documents. Instead, the Ministry of Health says “a digital Covid-19 vaccination certificate” will be available from December for New Zealanders who want to travel overseas.

The term passport can be politically loaded—think of “papers, please”—so it’s one of the reasons many places around the world opt to call them certificates instead. New Zealand’s app will contain a QR code, a digital signature and the certificate itself will be printable.

The health ministry has been clear that New Zealand’s passport is designed for international travel and said nothing about domestic use. Based on how the passports have evolved around the world, that won’t last.

What’s happened overseas. The UK rolled out the passports for international travel, only to then announce that they’ll be required to get into English nightclubs and other venues in England at the end of the month, the BBC has reported. Despite criticisms, the government has said it’s the only way to reopen the economy safely. In many cases, private industry was ahead of the British parliament, with Premier League clubs requiring fans to show proof of vaccination when they reopened stadiums to capacity crowds last month.

The looming debate. I spoke with Andrew Chen, a researcher at the University of Auckland, about a debate that’s about to take off in New Zealand. It’ll start like this: A business, hypothetically a supermarket chain, will announce that all customers will need to show the vaccine passport to buy groceries. Suddenly the international passport is domestic. The government can either ban businesses from using them this way (unlikely), or set the standards for who can ask for the passports and when.

“It’s coming. The government just needs to make a decision and figure out how to control the risks of discrimination and problems created by using an international document in a domestic context,” says Chen.

How does it discriminate? With Māori and Pacific peoples expected to have lower vaccination rates, do we just accept that portions of those communities will be banned from businesses going forward? That’s not a long-term solution, says Chen. There are also human rights and privacy implications that need to be settled. Chen has already received reports of employers asking their staff to tell them when they’ve booked vaccines. The privacy commissioner has said that vaccination status is health information that’s private and protected by legislation. This will only become a more significant issue in the coming weeks.

While the freedom of movement is enshrined into the New Zealand bill of rights, limits on that freedom have been justified on public health grounds. A number of the country’s international agreements also require it to prevent and control epidemic diseases.

What about people with exemptions? It’s one thing to trust trained border guards with the information in a vaccine passport, it’s another thing completely with a bouncer at a club or a security guard at a restaurant. The EU’s vaccine passport is working on a way to indicate when someone has a legitimate reason for not being vaccinated, something Chen says should be pursued in New Zealand as well. As he explains, do you want to show a supermarket worker a note from your GP that you’ve got a disease?

International exemptions will vary. What happens when a visitor from overseas arrives with an approved vaccine passport that says they’ve not been jabbed but they have, for example, a religious exemption not recognised by New Zealand? Chaos.

There’s a lot more chaos. Astrid Koornneef, a manager in the government’s Covid-19 vaccination programme, told The Bulletin that work is under way to ensure the passport is “compatible with emerging international standards, so it can be recognised by as many countries as possible”. The US, European Union and Australia have all developed vaccine passports technologies that can’t be used interchangeably. This is something the world will need to sort out. The best case scenario, according to Chen, is that you can change the settings in the app and get a different QR code for each jurisdiction.

The BMJ has published a helpful map with descriptions of a number of vaccine passports. Here are some systems being used overseas:

• The European Union has a “digital Covid certificate” which proves that people have been vaccinated, received a negative test result or have recovered from Covid-19. It’s been in force across the EU since July 1 and has been adopted by nine neighbouring non-EU states, including Norway, Turkey and the Ukraine. Many EU countries require a vaccine passport for domestic venues.
• The United States federal government has said it won’t adopt a national passport, while seven states like New York and California are slowly rolling out proof-of-vaccination systems. Another 22 American states have banned vaccine passports, largely along partisan lines, with Republicans opposing the apps. The MIT Technology Review has a fascinating look at the politics behind US vaccine apps.
• Canada is working on a digital vaccine passport for overseas travel and most provinces are implementing local versions as a requirement for people to access restaurants, bars and other venues.
• The Israeli government has a “green pass system,” allowing people over the age of 12 who are vaccinated to attend large events. It was suspended after the country’s vaccine rollout largely surpassed the virus, but was reinstated in July.
• Singapore has bundled a vaccine passport into its contact tracing app and is required to enter many venues, including malls, schools and places of worship.
• China has largely outsourced the job to private industry, with Alipay creating an app that sorts people based on national surveillance data into whether they should be restricted in their domestic movements. WeChat has created a health certificate for international travel showing vaccine status.

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