Flights from India suspended
New Zealand has suspended travel from India in response to a surge in Covid cases among travellers to this country.
The ban will begin on Sunday and will remain in place until April 28.
The travel halt follows news that 17 of the 23 new Covid cases in managed isolation announced yesterday had arrived from India.
While arrivals from India had triggered the risk assessment, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the Government would be looking at risks posed by other Covid hotspot countries.
“This is not a permanent arrangement but rather a temporary measure,” Ardern said.
The temporary hold would also help reduce the risk that travellers themselves faced, she said.
Health teams would use the time until April 28 to try and plan safer ways to accept travellers from India.
But there were no guarantees officials would come up with a better solution.
“We haven’t identified anything obvious . . . but we have to try and do better,” Ardern said.
She wanted to look at the quality of PCR Covid testing in other countries and whether tests were being taken in the 72 hours before departure.
Health teams may also look at the flight routes arrivals took, not just their country of origin.
She said more than 80 per cent of border workers had now been vaccinated.
Those who are not vaccinated were set to be moved into other roles and would not be able to remain in a Covid high-risk job, Ardern said.
Her expectation was that all the country’s frontline border workers had to be vaccinated.
The Government allowed time for those who didn’t wish to be vaccinated to consider their options and seek more information. However, from Monday those who still did not wish to be vaccinated would now need to move to other roles. There were few other countries, aside from Australia, that had been operating managed isolation facilities in a similar way to New Zealand.