At least there's finally a plan in place for international travel again in early 2022. My friends from France will be able to visit :)

Well that's unusual. The first dose totals for the 3 Auckland DHBs dropped yesterday from the day before.

And it's not just my maths, this website shows negative doses as well.

https://covid19map.co.nz/vaccination-rates/dhb/

quickymart:

 

At least there's finally a plan in place for international travel again in early 2022. My friends from France will be able to visit :)

 

 

 

With the nightmare occurring in Europe currently I wouldn't hold out much hope.

quickymart:

 

At least there's finally a plan in place for international travel again in early 2022. My friends from France will be able to visit :)

 

 

 

Possibly but it is all so fluid. If our health system gets overwhelmed, it won't be able to cope with an additional significant load from tourists. NZs vaccination levels still leave over a million people vaccinated.
We are likely going to get a wave of cases heading into winter next year like they are encountering in Europe. It makes all these people in the NZ media who have been saying the rest of the world is going back to normal, look like a joke. 
As more countries mandate vaccinations (heard one TVNZ reporter  refer to it is 'mandation' which has a different meaning:/) , it should hopefully make it easier for that to occur in NZ. These rules and risk levels over vaccination are open to interpretation and loopholes, and just creates so much complexity. Then the government have been contradicting the MOH over whether businesses would need to scan to authenticate passes.  Then the fines are ridiculous imo, considering we now have covid in the community and it can't be eliminated (at least not in Auckland), and it will be spreading throughout schools via unvaccinated children. But when the virus was able to be eliminated and we were in lockdowns, they didn't enforce the rules and let flouters get away with spreading the virus, and handed out very few fines. The fines they did hand out were wet bus tickets too. So much easier to just mandate it, and that also gets away from the whole 'two class' citizen thing, as everyone will be treated the same.

Mmmm, I know. Just would be nice to see it all go ahead. Maybe I'm being too optimistic.

quickymart:

Mmmm, I know. Just would be nice to see it all go ahead. Maybe I'm being too optimistic.

Handle9:

quickymart:

 

Mmmm, I know. Just would be nice to see it all go ahead. Maybe I'm being too optimistic.

 

It’ll happen. There will be no health justification for having the border shut at that point.

There is no longer a health justification now. The rules that will come into effect in Jan (pre departure test + 7 days home iso) mean that I, as a fully vaccinated person in Australia, still pose less risk than a local if I were to arrive today under the same rules.

It would actually be safer to have inbound travellers quarantine and get a PCR test at day 2 or 3, then end isolation when they get a negative result. And would likely mean less time in iso as you'd get a result within a day or two.

ajobbins:

 

Handle9:

It’ll happen. There will be no health justification for having the border shut at that point.

 

There is no longer a health justification now. The rules that will come into effect in Jan (pre departure test + 7 days home iso) mean that I, as a fully vaccinated person in Australia, still pose less risk than a local if I were to arrive today under the same rules.

 

It would actually be safer to have inbound travellers quarantine and get a PCR test at day 2 or 3, then end isolation when they get a negative result. And would likely mean less time in iso as you'd get a result within a day or two.

 

There is some justification now in the context of the other reopening activities happening. Sequencing them so they happen one at a time, with a time gap in between, seems sensible to manage each injection of cases.

The sequence is:

Traffic light system on 3rd of December,

Auckland border on 15th of December,

Australia MIQ on 17th of January

Rest of the world on 14 February

Individually what you say is correct but there will be significant volumes of people travelling as soon as they can which may inject significant numbers of additional cases. It seems sensible to have a gap in between each step.

I'd love to be able to come home for Christmas but do understand why it's being done this way. Hopefully by the time we can come back in July there won't be home isolation at all.

Handle9:

 

Traffic light system on 3rd of December,

 

Auckland border on 15th of December,

 

Australia MIQ on 17th of January

 

Rest of the world on 14 February

 

Basically each step (other than the Auckland border) is predicated on the previous step not turning into a hot mess with 1000's of cases.....

ajobbins: There is no longer a health justification now. The rules that will come into effect in Jan (pre departure test + 7 days home iso) mean that I, as a fully vaccinated person in Australia, still pose less risk than a local if I were to arrive today under the same rules.

It would actually be safer to have inbound travellers quarantine and get a PCR test at day 2 or 3, then end isolation when they get a negative result. And would likely mean less time in iso as you'd get a result within a day or two.

This is all about health. As it should be.

We currently have a health system that is managing to deliver health care to NZ for both COVID-19 cases and all the other health issues that we have - elective surgery etc. We can debate as to how well it does this but that is a debate that we always will have. The reality is that currently the system is coping.

To jump into opening the borders when there are so many unknowns would be very risky as I see it. The stepping in to opening as set out over the next months seems like a reasonable approach with the proviso that this timetable can be pushed out or sped up depending upon what happens in terms of cases (but particularly the hospital numbers) going forward.

We have the overseas experience to learn from although NZ's situation I think is certainly different to Europe and North America where the population has been widely exposed to the virus in addition to vaccination. In NZ we only really have vaccination with minimal numbers having had COVID.

morrisk:

This is all about health. As it should be.

 

mattwnz:

 

Possibly but it is all so fluid. If our health system gets overwhelmed, it won't be able to cope with an additional significant load from tourists. NZs vaccination levels still leave over a million people vaccinated.
We are likely going to get a wave of cases heading into winter next year like they are encountering in Europe. It makes all these people in the NZ media who have been saying the rest of the world is going back to normal, look like a joke. 
As more countries mandate vaccinations (heard one TVNZ reporter  refer to it is 'mandation' which has a different meaning:/) , it should hopefully make it easier for that to occur in NZ. These rules and risk levels over vaccination are open to interpretation and loopholes, and just creates so much complexity. Then the government have been contradicting the MOH over whether businesses would need to scan to authenticate passes.  Then the fines are ridiculous imo, considering we now have covid in the community and it can't be eliminated (at least not in Auckland), and it will be spreading throughout schools via unvaccinated children. But when the virus was able to be eliminated and we were in lockdowns, they didn't enforce the rules and let flouters get away with spreading the virus, and handed out very few fines. The fines they did hand out were wet bus tickets too. So much easier to just mandate it, and that also gets away from the whole 'two class' citizen thing, as everyone will be treated the same.

 

A bit negative. Overseas they went "Freedom" early. Best to be free than die. The issue in NZ was to get vaccinated THEN open up, but the poor compliance by a few left the rest putting up with it. So we will also have a Freedom Day next week. The desire is the vaccinated make a difference. Cases will go wild BUT if the vast majority are vaccinated thats a false but newsworthy total. The metric will be hospital beds and ICU. Should they rise then traffic light will be/remain red. 

Handle9:

 

 

 

I'd love to be able to come home for Christmas but do understand why it's being done this way. Hopefully by the time we can come back in July there won't be home isolation at all.

 

We agree on very little, if anything, but I hope thats the case for you

wellygary:

 

 

 

Basically each step (other than the Auckland border) is predicated on the previous step not turning into a hot mess with 1000's of cases.....

 

Yes, but if the thousands of cases were vaccinated people, and the hospital beds were anti vaxxers, AND thats manageable, thats a win