New Zealand should take a phased approach to reopening its border but not before a high percentage of the population is vaccinated, according to an expert governmental advisory panel.
The advice’s release comes a day before the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, is expected to make an announcement on the government’s approach to the reopening of the country on Thursday.
New Zealand, which is closed to most international visitors, has extremely strict border controls in place, requiring returnees to spend two weeks in a government-run managed isolation and quarantine facility (MIQ) in order to sustain its Covid-19 elimination strategy.
While those strict border protections have kept the country largely safe from Covid-19, it has also frozen international tourism, separated families and left some expats and migrants feeling alienated and abandoned.
Up until now, there has been very little information about what New Zealand’s roadmap for reopening might look like, but the advice from the Strategic Covid-19 Public Health Advisory Group, led by epidemiologist Sir David Skegg, provides some clues.
The group of six scientific experts recommends that once the vaccination program is fully rolled out, the country can begin slowly admitting more travellers, without needing to go into MIQ, based on risk-based factors such as their vaccination status and the state of the pandemic in their country of origin.
It also proposes that travellers be subjected to pre-departure testing and rapid testing on arrival in New Zealand.
About 1.25 million people in New Zealand have received their first shot of the Pfizer vaccine and just over three-quarters of a million are fully vaccinated. The government has been criticised for its slow vaccine rollout but it remains confident that everyone will be offered the vaccine by the end of 2021.
Skegg encourages the government to continue pursuing its ambitious elimination strategy once the border opens, clarifying that it means treating elimination as a process rather than a permanent outcome.
“Elimination does not necessarily mean zero transmission or incidence,” he said. “In April 2020, the director general of health [Dr Ashley Bloomfield] stated: ‘The elimination approach focuses on zero-tolerance towards new cases, rather than a goal of no new cases.’”
Skegg cautioned that allowing more quarantine-free travel would increase the risk of Covid-19 variants entering the community, and that even with high vaccination rates there could be outbreaks.
But he said these could be “stamped out by public health and social measures such as testing, together with rapid tracing and isolation of contacts, as well as physical distancing and mask-wearing where appropriate”.
The group recommended that preparatory work begin now, including seeking advice on rapid testing at airports, along with the strengthening of public health and social measures such as expanding health system capability and contact-tracing capacity, and mandating QR scanning at some types of venues.
The associate health minister responsible for commissioning the report, Dr Ayesha Verrall, said the emergence of the Delta variant had altered both the advice provided and the country’s approach to reconnecting with the world.
More preparation was needed before that could happen, she said.
“We need to do more to further strengthen our borders and bolster our health defences, including through the vaccine rollout, before we can safely open the border further.”