Trans-Tasman bubble (Quarantine-Free Travel)

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#2734489 25-Jun-2021 14:48

Scott3:

It's becoming pretty clear that the NSW outbreak is going to be fairly big. And it has spread to Victoria...

Given that it is the highly contagious Delta variant, and that NZ only had about 3 months before we get a decent chunk of the population vaccinated, I think we should be being extremely cautious.

I think pausing the entire travel bubble for 3-4 weeks (possibly excluding WA who have been very cautious to date) would be appropriate.

At the very least, we should put in place both pre-departure testing & on arrival testing (not required to isolate and wait for results). Cira $300 a person in testing (paid by the traveler) could save us from additional economically costly lock-down's.

I think the latest pause is 12 days? No doubt it will extend and extend.

I dont like the testing. Its not reliable enough, you can catch it afterwards then fly, I think thats already happened in the recent past. The simpler and cheaper method is full vaccination. Im travelling so Im allowed to get fully vaccinated if my age doesnt yet comply. It will happen anyway so why not now? If all departures and arrivals are fully vaccinated, isnt that the best outcome? It will be reality in six months

wellygary

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#2734492 25-Jun-2021 14:53

Scott3:

It's becoming pretty clear that the NSW outbreak is going to be fairly big. And it has spread to Victoria...

Given that it is the highly contagious Delta variant, and that NZ only had about 3 months before we get a decent chunk of the population vaccinated, I think we should be being extremely cautious.

Granted, but Australia are in an even worse pickle that us for their Vaccine Rollout... They have pretty much walked away from AZ for anyone under 60 now, but they aren't due any Pfizer in great quantities until October

This is from their Health Minister a month ago...

"Forward plan for Pfizer, approximately 350,000 doses a week are arriving at the moment. They boosted it up for this month, next month is approximately 300,000 doses, and then over the July, August September quarter we will have the equivalent of 600,000 a week. Those specific weekly amounts have not yet been confirmed, so it's a quarterly figure. Then that again is replicated in the last quarter of the year with an additional 20 million on top of that."
https://www.pm.gov.au/media/press-conference-australian-parliament-house-act-40

600K a week is ~2.5 million a month, for a population 5 times NZ....

We are getting 1 million Pfizer in July, + the bulk of 8 million more doses in August/Sept/Early October... We will likely be well ahead of them (and well on our way to having some good immunity) in 6 weeks time...

mattwnz

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#2734534 25-Jun-2021 16:01

I was watching parts of the standup today and the questions some of the people were asking were painful. It takes up to two weeks for people to start showing symptoms, as has been shown by people in MIQ who can test positive near the end of their stay. They have only been testing NZers for a few days yet some people suggested that it looks like no one has been infected. But testing isn’t even 100 percent accurate. Don’t think anyone asked if the bubble should be paused. But IMO Australia has a major problem and the travel bubble needs pausing imo. But I suspect they won’t do anything and we may end up with more cases in NZ. Again we seem to be trusting that people like close contacts will self isolate, when this didn’t work last year and resulted in a lockdown.

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#2734541 25-Jun-2021 16:15

mattwnz: I was watching parts of the standup today and the questions some of the people were asking were painful. It takes up to two weeks for people to start showing symptoms, as has been shown by people in MIQ who can test positive near the end of their stay. They have only been testing NZers for a few days yet some people suggested that it looks like no one has been infected. But testing isn’t even 100 percent accurate. Don’t think anyone asked if the bubble should be paused. But IMO Australia has a major problem and the travel bubble needs pausing imo. But I suspect they won’t do anything and we may end up with more cases in NZ. Again we seem to be trusting that people like close contacts will self isolate, when this didn’t work last year and resulted in a lockdown.

Honestly, it sort of defies belief it hasn't been paused. I say sort of, because in some ways it's how I expect this Government to handle things.

I mean, surely, SURELY it's common sense. You'd think someone might learn something from 18 months of being in charge of pandemic response.

They never learn.

Scott3

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#2734543 25-Jun-2021 16:17

tdgeek:

I think the latest pause is 12 days? No doubt it will extend and extend.

I dont like the testing. Its not reliable enough, you can catch it afterwards then fly, I think thats already happened in the recent past. The simpler and cheaper method is full vaccination. Im travelling so Im allowed to get fully vaccinated if my age doesnt yet comply. It will happen anyway so why not now? If all departures and arrivals are fully vaccinated, isnt that the best outcome? It will be reality in six months

The current pause only covers NSW. Given the scale of the outbreak, leaks to other states have already happened, and there is some likelihood will happen again. I am proposing a nationwide pause (perhaps excluding WA).

Yes testing has it's limitations, it will only ever be supplementary to other bubble management tools. But it is fairly easy and cheap to put in place, I don't see why we wouldn't use this tool in this way.

I don't think it is ethical or desirable to require full vaccination until unless vaccinations are readily available to all ages covered by the requirement. And I think there would be a big push back from the general public if there was a route for lower risk people to jump the queue on vaccines so to speak, because they want to take a holiday across the ditch. Even if we did to early access vaccines, if we insisted on "Full vaccination" this change would need to be put in place roughly a month before the restriction took effect to give already booked travelers time to get the doses (incl 21 day waiting period). Also would suck for those that need to travel unexpectedly and in a hurry (urgent work, bereavement etc).

wellygary:

Granted, but Australia are in an even worse pickle that us for their Vaccine Rollout... They have pretty much walked away from AZ for anyone under 60 now, but they aren't due any Pfizer in great quantities until October

This is from their Health Minister a month ago...

"Forward plan for Pfizer, approximately 350,000 doses a week are arriving at the moment. They boosted it up for this month, next month is approximately 300,000 doses, and then over the July, August September quarter we will have the equivalent of 600,000 a week. Those specific weekly amounts have not yet been confirmed, so it's a quarterly figure. Then that again is replicated in the last quarter of the year with an additional 20 million on top of that."
https://www.pm.gov.au/media/press-conference-australian-parliament-house-act-40

600K a week is ~2.5 million a month, for a population 5 times NZ....

We are getting 1 million Pfizer in July, + the bulk of 8 million more doses in August/Sept/Early October... We will likely be well ahead of them (and well on our way to having some good immunity) in 6 weeks time...

I agree that NZ is better placed in terms of projected near future vaccination dose rates than Australia.

But it is not super relevant. With say sub 30% vaccination rates (both sides of the tasman atm), a delta strain outbreak is likely to require harsh (L3 / L4) to contain.

With this in mind, we need to be super careful untill we get 40 - 50%+ vaccination rates. (still not enough for herd immunity, but likely mean lower alert levels can contain outbreaks due to reduced r0 in the semi vaccinated community)

Lias

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#2734546 25-Jun-2021 16:19

MikeB4:

I believe that keeping the border closed until we have vaccinated at least 70% of the population is logical especially so because of the Delta variant. Anything else is playing Russian roulette and gambling with peoples lives for profit. If the Delta variant takes hold here the damage done to the economy with be massive and eclipse any damage from keeping the bubbles closed. We can recover from recession we cannot recover from death.

Wowzers, the day has come we finally agree on something.. Maybe the world IS ending :-P

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wellygary

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#2734552 25-Jun-2021 16:33

Scott3:

I agree that NZ is better placed in terms of projected near future vaccination dose rates than Australia.

But it is not super relevant. With say sub 30% vaccination rates (both sides of the tasman atm), a delta strain outbreak is likely to require harsh (L3 / L4) to contain.

With this in mind, we need to be super careful untill we get 40 - 50%+ vaccination rates. (still not enough for herd immunity, but likely mean lower alert levels can contain outbreaks due to reduced r0 in the semi vaccinated community)

Yeah, at best case NZ could hit 50% fully vaxxed by end of September (5 million doses delivered),(but its more likely to be 60% (1 dose) and 40%(2)

But its still a heck of a lot better than we are at the moment, which is basically a screen door flapping in the wind...

mattwnz

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#2734553 25-Jun-2021 16:35

networkn:

mattwnz: I was watching parts of the standup today and the questions some of the people were asking were painful. It takes up to two weeks for people to start showing symptoms, as has been shown by people in MIQ who can test positive near the end of their stay. They have only been testing NZers for a few days yet some people suggested that it looks like no one has been infected. But testing isn’t even 100 percent accurate. Don’t think anyone asked if the bubble should be paused. But IMO Australia has a major problem and the travel bubble needs pausing imo. But I suspect they won’t do anything and we may end up with more cases in NZ. Again we seem to be trusting that people like close contacts will self isolate, when this didn’t work last year and resulted in a lockdown.

Honestly, it sort of defies belief it hasn't been paused. I say sort of, because in some ways it's how I expect this Government to handle things.

I mean, surely, SURELY it's common sense. You'd think someone might learn something from 18 months of being in charge of pandemic response.

They never learn.

I don't think it has been helped by the media. Surely one of them should just come out and say, hey, Australia looks to now have a problem with this virus spreading uncontrollably, why not pause the bubble?. The fact is that NSW is not following the process that NZ would have followed, and it appears like it is going to result in major problems. I think they are now doing some lockdowns in some areas, which contradicts their earlier positions. Especially as we are up to 2 weeks behind the virus at any one time.

I just feel like they haven't learnt anything. We simply can't trust everyone will do the right thing. That is why we now force returning people from other countries into 14 days of MIQ. It is not as though the MOH hasn't made errors in the past. I remember last year they said early on that the risk of widespread CT occurring in NZ was low. That changed when we went into lockdown.

networkn

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#2734557 25-Jun-2021 16:41

Why should anyone be relying on the Media? I don't think Government/MOH sets policy nor should they, on what the press say.

The reality is, this is just plain common sense, as is much of the Pandemic response and MIQ management. There appears to be a *stunning* lack of it in general with the way all of this (and most of everything else) is handled.

When we have community transmission occurs within NZ, we change alert levels and or lock down. Why would we treat overseas locations we have a travel bubble with.

It boggles the mind.

Dingbatt

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#2734610 25-Jun-2021 16:51

networkn:

Why should anyone be relying on the Media? I don't think Government/MOH sets policy nor should they, on what the press say.

But people have become used to the media telling them what to think. Add to that OAF (opinion as fact) reporting and you have completely unqualified people forcing policies and agendas by virtue of an audience.

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

mattwnz

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#2734616 25-Jun-2021 16:59

networkn:

Why should anyone be relying on the Media? I don't think Government/MOH sets policy nor should they, on what the press say.

The reality is, this is just plain common sense, as is much of the Pandemic response and MIQ management. There appears to be a *stunning* lack of it in general with the way all of this (and most of everything else) is handled.

When we have community transmission occurs within NZ, we change alert levels and or lock down. Why would we treat overseas locations we have a travel bubble with.

It boggles the mind.

I don't disagree, but the media in NZ tends to control the narrative.

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tdgeek

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#2734845 26-Jun-2021 08:19

The MoH controls this. The Govt may officially put whatever measures in places but they aren't epidemiologists or doctors. Maybe we need a new MoH top level staff change? If Dr Bloomfield and his advisers aren't up to it?

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#2735251 27-Jun-2021 09:24

72 hours pause for all trans-tasman travel

Quarantine Free Travel from all Australian states and territories will be paused from 10.30pm (NZT) tonight until 11.59pm (NZT) on Tuesday 29 June, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins has announced.

The decision follows updated public health advice from officials this evening.

There are now multiple cases and outbreaks in Australia in differing stages of containment and the health risk for New Zealand in response to these cases is increasing.

As a result the Government has taken the precautionary step of temporarily widening the current pause with New South Wales to include all of Australia.

This short pause will give us time to get a better understanding of the developing situation and to consider the potential implementation of a range of measures to make the bubble safer, such as the introduction of pre-departure testing for all flights from Australia to New Zealand.

The Government will continue to monitor the situation closely and the decision will be reviewed on Monday. We remain committed to Quarantine Free Travel with Australia.

The pause is necessary given the growing number of COVID-19 cases being reported across Australia, Chris Hipkins said.

“I acknowledge the frustration and inconvenience that comes with this pause, but given the high level of transmissibility of what appears to be the Delta variant, and the fact that there are now multiple community clusters, it is the right thing to do to keep COVID-19 out of New Zealand.”

New Zealand travellers in Australia should follow the health instructions of the state or territory they are in.

Anyone who was in Australia from June 21 onwards should monitor their health, and be aware that the number of locations of interest are increasing and they should be checking these regularly.

It is also important that people contact Healthline should they develop any symptoms.

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#2735428 27-Jun-2021 18:09

Just watched the news. More kiwis stuck in Aus complaining because the bubble is working exactly as they were told it would.

tdgeek

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#2735432 27-Jun-2021 18:19

dafman:

Just watched the news. More kiwis stuck in Aus complaining because the bubble is working exactly as they were told it would.

LOL. They were told that it can get stuck. Instructions on the tin were correct :-)

Sorry, maybe thats a bit mean but its also a bit factual.

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