Pre-flight Covid tests ‘inevitable’

As positive tests double, Govt plans to tighten rules for arrivals

The Government is poised to extend compulsory preflight Covid-19 tests for nearly all international travellers coming to New Zealand in an effort to cut the number of people landing here with the virus.

And Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins says it is inevitable that vaccinations against Covid-19 will become a pre-requisite for international travel, once the mass vaccinations around the globe are completed.

He also said Air New Zealand was considering further measures to reduce the risk of crew exposure to Covid during layovers in the United States.

Compulsory pre-flight testing for arrivals to New Zealand is now in effect for arrivals from the US and Britain where hospitals are struggling to cope with new waves and deaths are about 4000 and 1000 a day respectively.

Positive Covid-19 tests have almost doubled in New Zealand recently — 99 people have tested positive for Covid-19 in New Zealand managed isolation in the first 17 days this year, according to the Ministry of Health figures, compared with 54 positive tests in the last 17 days of 2020.

They were all detected in managed isolation or quarantine. The most recent case of community transmission was November 18.

It is not clear how many of the new cases are of the more contagious UK variant, but the Ministry of Health is to update those figures.

The compulsory pre-flight tests were announced by Hipkins last Tuesday and took effect at 11.59pm on Friday to give airlines time to prepare.

They must also have a post-flight Day-0 Covid-19 test at their managed isolation and stay in their rooms until the result is known.

Hipkins and Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield are also set to announce a fresh set of orders which will extend pre-flight testing to all other routes, except from Australia, the Pacific and the Antarctic.

The Ministry of Health said yesterday that 10 people had tested positive for Covid-19 in managed isolation in New Zealand over two days — seven of the 10 had flown through Dubai.

National and Act have been calling for pre-flight testing for months but Hipkins said it had not been practical initially.

“If we had made a mandatory predeparture testing even four months ago, a lot of people would not have been able to comply because testing wasn’t that widely available,” he told the Herald.

“Some countries still aren’t even testing symptomatic people let along testing for the purposes of travel whereas now, testing is much more widely available and so people’s ability to comply with it is much, much better than even four months ago.”

Commenting on the future of international travel, Hipkins thought it would inevitably be linked to vaccinations.

“I think it is likely that once vaccines are broadly publicly available around the world, that it will start to become an international standard. In order to travel internationally, you’ll need to be vaccinated against Covid-19.”

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce has said proof of vaccination would be a requirement for travel at some point in all but exceptional cases.

Hipkins said Air New Zealand was looking at further ways to reduce the risk of its crew being exposed to Covid-19 on layovers in Covid hotspots.

“They have stopped crew laying over in Los Angeles and San Francisco and are basing them out of Honolulu instead,” he said.