Jacinda Ardern unveils three-speed plan to reconnect New Zealand with the world

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced a phased three-speed plan to re-open New Zealand to international travel from the start of 2022 that will allow fully vaccinated travellers from low-risk countries to skip quarantine.

However, 14 days of hotel quarantine will still be required for all unvaccinated travellers and anyone from countries deemed high-risk, while vaccinated travellers from “medium-risk” nations - those with widespread COVID but high vaccination rates - may be able to quarantine in private homes.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announces plans to reopen borders to the world from early next year. Credit: AP

Ardern said the government planned to follow the advice of its experts and maintain its elimination strategy.

“While the pandemic continues to rage overseas, and the virus continues to change and mutate, the best thing we can do is lock in the gains achieved to date while keeping our options open,” she said.

The country will also speed up its vaccination rollout. All adults in New Zealand over the age of 18 will be able to book in their vaccine by September 1.

Ardern said a new trial would begin in October that would allow some business travellers to quarantine at home rather than in hotels as a test of the new system it planned to introduce for medium-risk countries next year.

Ardern also announced it was increasing the time between Pfizer vaccine doses from three weeks to six weeks. She said the initial groups targeted for the vaccine — border workers and older people — had already been fully vaccinated.

“From a population basis, it makes sense to get as many New Zealanders at least partially vaccinated quickly,” Ardern said.

New Zealand would not resume the trans-Tasman bubble with Australia if its states were still experiencing outbreaks, Ardern warned. “We are not going to open if we consider that there is too much risk to New Zealand. We were clear on that from the beginning and that is still our position.”

She would not commit to treating individual states of Australia differently under the three-tier system when international travel resumes.

“We’ve demonstrated our willingness to treat Australia state-by-state, but increasingly we’ve seen the challenge, even within Australia, of just maintaining those borders in a way that doesn’t see a strong community outbreak moving into other areas.”

New Zealand’s chief epidemiologist Professor David Skegg was damning about the latest COVID-19 outbreak in NSW. “The Australian experience has been sobering – one case producing the disaster they have at the moment.”

While the professor noted that “NSW was really admired for the quality of its contact tracing”, he said the decision to delay lockdown meant “I don’t see their way out”.

NSW reported 345 new local coronavirus cases on Thursday, with Premier Gladys Berejiklian warning the lockdown in the Hunter region would be extended by a week due to ongoing cases. Its week-long lockdown was due to expire tomorrow.

Skegg dismissed plans by Berejiklian to increase vaccinations in the hope that restrictions could be relaxed: “That will just make things worse,” said Skegg, who led Ardern’s hand-picked group of scientists to advise the government on reopening New Zealand to the world.

“It’s a very unfortunate situation and of course it’s spilling over the border into other states.”

The nation of 5 million has managed to stamp out the coronavirus’ spread, with only 26 deaths.

However, the vaccine rollout has been much slower than other developed nations, including Australia. Only 28 per cent of people in New Zealand have received at least one dose, while 15 per cent are fully vaccinated.

World Health Organisation Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus suggested on Wednesday (Thursday AEST) that unless things change, the world could see 100 million more cases of COVID-19 by the early months of next year.

“At the current trajectory, we could pass 300 million cases early next year,” he said during a media briefing. “But we can change that. We are all in this together, but the world is not acting like it.”

with Stuff, Reuters and AP

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