We’ve been here before, but: Today, the NZ Government announced a 5 step plan to reopen the New Zealand border over the next 10 months. One key aspect is that MIQ will be replaced with self-isolation for fully vaccinated travellers. New Zealanders are being prioritised (as they should be), with others qualifying later. Visitors from visa waiver countries (such as the USA, Canada, the UK, etc) can travel to New Zealand from July. A pre-departure test will be mandatory, of course.
However: Upon arrival fully-vaccinated people will be required to self-isolate for whatever the required period is at the time. Initially, it will be ten days, but that could change—shorter or longer.
I don’t think that casual (short term) tourists will be able to come to New Zealand, though, because they’d have to organise 10 days of isolation. It may be that people might be allowed to stay with friends or family (or, they might not—that might be impossible to manage safely), but they still won’t be able to go anywhere or see anything until the mandatory self-isolation period is completed.
These changes are really about making it easier for New Zealanders and their families to come to New Zealand, first, then for foreign workers to come here, if safe to do so, and then also to make it easier for Australians to move here (they can live and work in New Zealand without visas or permits, similar to permanent residents), again, if safe to do so. But an open border for short-term tourists is clearly a way off yet.
Covid is an ever-changing monster, so no guarantees on any of this: Things could become dramatically better over the rest of this year, or become dramatically worse. I prefer to hope for the best. Most of us would really like to welcome visitors again.
The graphic above was posted on Facebook by the NZ Government’s official Covid 19 site, Unite Against Covid 19. This post is a revised version of something I posted earlier today to my personal Facebook.
2 comments:
Speaking of Australia, what did you think of the convoluted process of No-vaxx not being able to play at the Aussie Open, told by some state authority YES, then ultimately NO?
I think there's a fair bit of dishonesty in that whole mess. The Australian Government alone gets to decide who is and who is not allowed to enter Australia from overseas. Both Tennis Australia and the Victorian governments had a strong financial incentive to interpret the rules in their favour. Did they? No idea, but surely when there's someone that high profile involved, the sensible thing to do would have been to get an official ruling on that specific case from the federal government. Did they? No idea.
It could also be that Scott Morrison was caught off guard by the justifiable outrage of ordinary Aussies when they saw a famous guy getting special treatment, and so his government quickly moved to ban Novak—which, by then, had become the only possible outcome that could've avoided riots.
Still, as I half-joked at the time, people don't give Scott Morrison enough credit: It takes real talent to make an already terrible situation even worse, and he managed it! Seeing Morrison's government as a huge joke because of this (among many other sins (like him jetting off to Hawaii while bushfires were ragin) is common for people on both sides of the Tasman. But with an Aussie election coming up this year, he had no other option open to him than kick Novak out of Australia. It'll be interesting to see if the voters will forgive him for his (seemingly unlimited) missteps.
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