Two flight zones, same workers
Quarantine-free arrivals into New Zealand are being processed by border agency workers who are also processing passengers heading straight into managed isolation and quarantine – something an epidemiologist professor says ‘‘doesn’t sound right’’.
All passengers flying into New Zealand must go directly into managed isolation and be processed through airport red zones unless they are coming straight from Australia, the Cook Islands or Niue, in which case they can pass through airport green zones and enter the country quarantine-free. However, there are no measures in place to stop passengers from a green flight being processed by Customs or Immigration New Zealand (INZ) officials who have interacted with passengers coming off a red flight and are potentially carrying the Covid-19 virus.
University of Otago, Wellington department of public health epidemiologist professor Nick Wilson said, as a general principle, there should be complete separation of the two zones, and that included workers.
‘‘On the face of it, it just doesn’t seem good to have any mixing of the red zone and green zone workers,’’ Wilson said. ‘‘They’re meant to be entirely separate.’’
Both Customs and Immigration NZ said they were following Ministry of Health guidelines.
Wilson said the Ministry of Health was not always giving the best advice, and it sometimes got things wrong. ‘‘Just because the Ministry of Health says something is state of the art, it doesn’t mean it’s correct.’’
For example New Zealand’s hotel quarantine model did not meet World Health Guidelines, he said. ‘‘And yet the Ministry of Health says hotel quarantine is OK.’’ The ministry was also very slow in recommending the use of masks, he said.
‘‘I don’t think the Ministry of Health has really had adequate standards and the evidence is that we have border failures.’’
A Customs spokeswoman said each day, officers would be allocated duties depending on the schedules of flights and needs of the day across Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch airports. Both Queenstown and Wellington airports were only operating green flights.
‘‘Any officer that is allocated to a role, in either green or red flights, will wear appropriate PPE and required to follow health and safety protocol.’’
When they finished their duties in that area, they would remove and dispose of the PPE, wash, and put fresh PPE on before commencing duties in the next area, she said.
Most Customs officers who processed passengers at the airports had received at least one if not both doses of the Pfizer/ BioNTech vaccine, she said. All frontline officers at airports were tested for Covid-19 every two weeks.
An Immigration New Zealand spokeswoman said it did not split staff into red and green teams.
‘‘INZ takes the safety of our staff and travellers seriously. We follow Ministry of Health guidelines at all times.’’
Staff did not routinely interact with arriving international passengers, she said.
Biosecurity New Zealand deputy director-general Penny Nelson said its rosters ensured there was no crossover between the red and green zones at international airports on the same shift.