New Zealand’s borders likely to stay closed for the whole of 2021

Overseas travellers will have to wait to get to New Zealand, with the country saying its borders will be closed to a lot of the world for most of the year.

Trips to New Zealand may be off the cards for most of the world until 2022, with the country’s Prime Minister flagging her borders will be closed for much of the year.

Amid the announcement from Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt that Australian borders will be closed for at least 72 hours after New Zealand recorded its first local case of COVID-19 in months, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said opening up in 2021 posed “too great a risk” for her country’s “health and economy”.

Ms Ardern said that despite the likelihood of remaining closed, she hoped to pursue travel arrangements with neighbouring Australia and other Pacific nations.

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Travel to New Zealand may be off the cards for many this year. Picture: Brett Costello

“Given the risks in the world around us and the uncertainty of the global rollout of the vaccine, we can expect our borders to be impacted for much of this year,” Ms Ardern said at a news conference.

“In the meantime, we will continue to pursue travel bubbles with Australia and the Pacific, but the rest of the world simply poses too great a risk to our health and our economy to take the risk at this stage.”

New Zealand recorded its first case of community transmission on the weekend, in a woman who returned to New Zealand on December 30 and had tested positive for the South African strain of the virus after leaving a two-week mandatory quarantine. The discovery led Australia to immediately suspend a travel bubble with New Zealand for 72 hours.

Prior to the case, New Zealand residents were able to travel in to Australia without needing to enter hotel quarantine.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the borders will likely remain closed for most of 2021. Picture: Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images

Ms Ardern said that while she thought the move to suspend the one-way bubble was a “disappointment”, she plans on still pursuing the bubble originally set to open by March 2021.

But even she admits that things aren’t looking as good as they once were when it comes to a full travel bubble between the two countries.

“We are looking to pursue it,” she told her post-Cabinet press conference on the bubble.

“[While] it does look increasingly difficult at a country-by-country level, we haven’t ruled out the possibility of state-by-state.”

Along with the suspended bubble announcement, anyone who arrived from New Zealand on or since January 14 must also isolate and be tested.