New Zealand Opening Borders
On Thursday, the government outlined a plan for opening New Zealand’s borders. This was a munch anticipated announcement that every group seemed to think was going to provide clarity and an answer to their particular problems. The migrant community in particular thought this announcement was going to be something to do with immigration policy, though I’m not sure why as it was always billed as a border-reopening roadmap.
The confusion about what the announcement was for was only increased when foreign press headlines and articles started touting that New Zealand was opening borders in 2022. Many of them make it sound like anyone from a foreign country who is vaccinated can start planning their trip for January 1.
How I understand the plan - as do many other people in New Zealand - is a bit different. First, all of this is subject to a successful vaccine rollout, which is a completely TBD thing. Vaccines will become available to everyone over 16 shortly, but we don’t know how many Kiwis will decide to get them at this point. I think there is a lot of grumbling about the roll out and I know many people are expecting problems and delays. (With that being said, if you’ve read my vaccine posts, you’ll know that my experience was that the operation was extremely well run and well organised.) I think the bigger question is how many Kiwis will decide not to get the vaccines and we’ll plateau like in the United States.
Secondly, in October, businesses that need to send people abroad will be able to participate in a test program for home isolation to see how that might work for vaccinated Kiwis. At the beginning of the pandemic we tried home isolation and it was a colossal failure. There are a lot of upset people at this part of the plan because we all remember how that didn’t work the first time around. It will be interesting to see what type of safeguards they put in place to ensure compliance this time around. Without a successful way to home isolate, there will have to be some changes made to the plan, and we have no idea what that might look like.
Third, the foreign press seems to have overlooked this bit of the plan, “The Government will then look to broaden out quarantine-free travel for vaccinated Kiwis from the first quarter of 2022, with different “risk pathways” based on how dangerous a country is.” The key part of this is vaccinated Kiwis. Not every tourist from who knows where. Or children who can’t be vaccinated yet, meaning no family vacations overseas. The detail I’ve seen behind this part of the plan is that if you’re a vaccinated Kiwi and if you are taking a short, one month or less trip, then you would be able to follow the low, medium, and high risk country covid guidelines. Of course, no one knows exactly which countries fall into any category at this point, but there is much speculation that “As with the UK, unless the situation changes drastically, New Zealand is likely to classify [the United States] as high risk.”
Finally, only after we’ve had success at all of these other parts of the plan, would we get to the ultimate goal of other vaccinated people entering the country. And even then there are quite a few things that need to be sorted out, like what vaccines are considered acceptable, how to verify that individuals have actually been vaccinated, and how to enforce self isolation for a tourist population.
People I’ve heard from aren’t fans of this plan. Almost everyone - with a few exceptions - is happy with the closed borders and sees no reason to mess up everything, especially when kids can’t get vaccinated yet. I can’t imagine the government hasn’t heard the public outcry against opening the borders, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there were changes to the plan, problems with the plan that mean the borders can’t be opened, or some change in the variants or science that mean the borders need to stay closed longer.
The moral of the story is: don’t pack your bags yet. There are so many details to work out and moving pieces to the covid puzzle that this is far from a done deal. One thing that the New Zealand government has done extremely well is to adjust the response as things change. Then they’ve communicated the science behind the change and the necessary policy shifts to address it. This science-backed policy was on full display on Thursday when the first part of the announcement was a panel of scientists followed by the politicians. I’m hopeful that the rest of the world gets their act together and successfully beats back covid over the next few months, but I’m not holding my breath for that or for open borders.
