Nurse Jenny, a London-based Kiwi nurse who cared for UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson after he was hospitalised with Covid-19 last May, is among the many struggling to land a spot in New Zealand's MIQ.
Jenny McGee told Seven Sharp she “seriously started to look at getting home” around January and February while Britain was “right in the midst of the second wave”.
She described jumping on the MIQ website and “at the time, there was just nothing”.
“I was desperate to get home for my Mum's birthday, which was in May, and I think this fed into feeling so fed up, I couldn't even get home to New Zealand. The odd spot would come up, it would be for two days’ time and obviously, that's not going to work with a full-time job,” she said.
Jenny McGee's parents had an inkling but didn’t know for sure that their daughter was looking after the world leader until this morning. (Source: Other)
McGee said Plan A involved returning to New Zealand to rest and see her family, which she called “very, very therapeutic but that wasn't going to happen,” after which she quickly came up with a Plan B to go to the Caribbean.
“I left it for a while. Obviously, I went off travelling and now I've come back and the last few weeks have been very seriously trying to get a spot and just getting nowhere.”
She said a travel agent offering a service to help her get a spot in managed isolation “emailed me in the last couple of days saying, ‘It's so hard, I think you've got to try and do this yourself as well and get as many people as you can to try and help.’
“My Mum, even tonight, has been texting me saying apparently, you can pay someone two and a half grand to get you an MIQ spot but it's completely unaffordable.
“I don't mind coming in and going into managed isolation and paying for it - that's not a problem, I understand - even though I'm fully vaccinated, I've never tested positive in all the hundreds of swabs I've had to date. I understand that, but it's just... When will I get home? I can't just carry on. I need to see my family - my family need to see me.”
McGee received global attention for caring for Boris Johnson when he contracted the coronavirus. (Source: Other)
The Government said it is trying to make the MIQ booking system easier but with 5000 people attempting to secure spots per day, they say demand is the real problem.
Consumer New Zealand CEO Jon Duffy told Seven Sharp the system can be “gamed by people who have got a bit of tech-savvy and those who can afford it are taking advantage of these services offered by these people”.
“I don’t think it’s fair and I think there’d be a lot of people out there who are pretty cheesed off that the system is allowing this to happen.”
Duffy said while there’s “no harm in third parties booking for people” such as travel agents, businesses charging “extortionate rates to people to book a room” leads to a situation where “only those people who have got stacks of cash in their back pocket can get a place in MIQ”.
“That just doesn’t seem fair to me.”
Jenny McGee from Invercargill treated Boris Johnson while he was in a London ICU in April battling Covid-19. (Source: Other)
He said he doesn’t believe the use of bots to secure a place in MIQ isn’t necessarily “illegal”, it could “potentially breach MIQ’s terms and conditions”.
“There are some entrepreneurial people out there who’ve got some tech-savvy, obviously, and they’ve seen an opportunity and they’re swooping on it. Whether it’s illegal or not, I don’t think so.”
Duffy said changes announced today by the head of MIQ “really depends on exactly what those changes are” to help level the playing field.
“Probably one of the worst outcomes we could see from this is if barriers are put in place but actually make it more frustrating for normal people following the normal process.
“Whatever MIQ do, they need to be really careful. On the other side of the coin, the people who are running the scripts or the bots that are booking these rooms and taking away from normal people obviously know what they’re doing so it could be pretty easy for them to evade the more simpler countermeasures that MIQ might deploy.”
Joint head of Managed Isolation and Quarantine, Megan Main, told Seven Sharp the latest release of MIQ vouchers, on July 7, saw more than 3000 rooms booked in three hours.
"Vouchers for MIQ are gradually released in batches over several weeks and months to assist people in different time zones and to help manage the number of users on the site at any one time. There are still more rooms to be released through to November and we advise people to keep checking the system for available dates," she said in a statement.
“While returning New Zealanders are our priority, we have to balance that with supporting our economic recovery by bringing in critical workers for areas where there are labour shortages. Each month at least, 10 per cent of MIQ rooms have been used by critical workers to support New Zealand business.
MIQ vouchers for December will be released after airlines have confirmed their flight schedules, she said.
“We keep making improvements to our systems, but so long as our priority is keeping Covid out of the country, we must maintain strict quarantine controls at our border. This will mean not everyone who wants to can come home at exactly the time they want.”
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