Evacuees to be Quarantined in NZ But Location Yet TO BE confirmed

New Zealanders evacuated from Wuhan amid the coronavirus outbreak will be quarantined in Aotearoa, not on Christmas Island like the Australians.

As efforts to co-ordinate evacuations continue Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters said New Zealanders would be brought back home, but where to remained a question to be answered.

“We are looking at the quarantine options within New Zealand already, we are working on that.” He said the government would be able to provide information on where when it had made a choice.

There are 53 New Zealanders registered as being in Wuhan and Mr Peters said extracting them was a complex issue. The criteria for getting on an evacuation flight were still being worked out.

The timeframe depended on the Chinese government’s permission to allow an aircraft to be used for extraction. A domestic aircraft would be a quicker solution than a military aircraft.

Mr Peters said the mission would require the agreement of whoever flew and staffed the plane.

Health safety measures would be put in place for them as well, he said.

When asked if New Zealand would pull consular staff out of China he said “that’s a fair question” but that “we don’t want to overreact until we know what we are reacting to and what the issue in terms of medical rescue is all about ... it’s a major concern and all aspects of the problem known now and potentially are being looked at”.

New Zealand and Australian diplomats are meeting in Wuhan today to finalise a plan to get trapped residents out.

Meanwhile, travel companies in New Zealand are cancelling tours to China amid the coronavirus outbreak. It comes after a directive from the Chinese government.

One of those is Flight Centre, which has dropped all planned tours until April.

Its head of product, Victoria Courtney, said if people had left already for a tour it would go ahead as planned.