After two years of uncertainty and stress for Kiwis overseas who want to come home, Chris Hipkins says the timeline for them being able to skip MIQ is “locked in”.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced a five-stage plan for the country to reopen its borders. The first stage would allow New Zealand citizens and residents to travel from Australia on February 27 at 11:59pm.
Fully vaccinated New Zealanders and other eligible travellers from the rest of the world would then be able to enter and home-isolate from 11.59pm on March 13.
Instead of having to enter the lottery for limited MIQ spots, these groups would be able to isolate at home.
Overseas Kiwis 1News spoke to on Thursday said they were “cautiously optimistic” after Omicron-related delays to earlier border re-opening plans.
Moira Duffy is cautiously optimistic following the Government's MIQ announcement. (Source: 1News)
Speaking on Breakfast on Friday, the Covid-19 Response Minister said the Government wanted to give people as much certainty as it could.
“Those first couple of dates, I think they are locked in now. We do want people to be able to plan with certainty.”
When pushed to confirm whether he could guarantee the dates for citizens and residents, Hipkins said: “The word guarantee is one I’ve always struggled with as Minister for the Covid-19 Response because we are dealing with a global pandemic.
“There isn’t a lot of certainty when you’re dealing with a virus that spreads from human to human and that mutates and changes the rules on us all of the time.”
As for other travellers, such as those from visa-waiver countries who weren’t expected to be able to skip MIQ until July at the latest, Hipkins said those plans were under constant review and would be brought forward if appropriate.
He said the country was moving to a new phase in its pandemic response where community Covid-19 cases would increasingly become the norm.
Before, Hipkins said the border restrictions were needed to give the country extra time to get people vaccinated and boosted.
“By giving ourselves that extra time, we will be better prepared. If we contrast, if we use the Delta outbreak as an example, before Delta hit the New Zealand community, we had achieved a higher rate of vaccination than they’d achieved in Australia when Delta first hit them.
“Those extra few months we had between the peak in Australia and when Delta arrived here in New Zealand meant the consequences of the Delta outbreak for New Zealand ended up being far less than for Australia,” he said.
Previous reopening plans have been shelved due to ongoing Covid uncertainty. (Source: 1News)
Hipkins said the tight borders also helped to reduce pandemic restrictions domestically, which had served the country well economically.
“But we have always been really clear that these are temporary measures,” he said of border restrictions.
It reflected the Government’s increased appetite for some risk of more cases in the community.
At Thursday’s announcement, Ardern said there would be a point later in 2022 where there would be so many cases in the community that additional Omicron cases coming through the border won’t make a material difference.
She said any new variant that could come after Omicron wouldn’t dramatically change the five-stage re-opening plan.
Ardern said Covid-19 modelling didn’t provide much insight into the impact of looser borders on community case numbers because predictions varied so greatly.
Instead, it was more useful to think of the modelling as potential scenarios, she said.
Hipkins said the self-isolation requirements for travellers, currently set at 10 days to match the duration for close contacts in the community, would help lower the effect returnees would have on the community outbreak.
The impact of re-opening borders for Māori and Pasifika
On Thursday, Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said she was worried about what eased border restrictions would mean for Māori and those who were vulnerable.
David Seymour wants borders to open, however Debbie Ngarewa-Packer wants to protect whānau. (Source: Breakfast)
Last month, researchers told 1News they feared Māori would bear the brunt of an Omicron outbreak because the group’s vaccination coverage was lagging and many were not yet eligible for a booster.
The Government reduced the interval between a person’s second Covid-19 vaccine dose and booster from four to three months in the bid to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
Hipkins acknowledged Ngarewa-Packer’s concerns.
“We’ve absolutely got a challenge there,” he said.
Hipkins said he continued to meet with Māori community stakeholders to hear their views and try and support the vaccination rollout.
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