Masks could be sufficient, Baker says
PHYSICAL distancing requirements on flights, provided passengers wear masks, could be relaxed, a University of Otago epidemiologist says.
However, Prof Michael Baker also believes there should be no travel in or out of Auckland while community transmission exists.
On Thursday, Queenstown Lakes Mayor Jim Boult called on the Government to revise the ‘‘excessive’’ social distancing requirements that, at present, mean Air New Zealand can sell only 50% of its seats on a turboprop aircraft, the likes of which service Queenstown from Christchurch, and 65% on A320s, which are put on longer routes.
That was having a massive impact on the national carrier as well as the travelling public, given flights were more expensive and demand was unsatisfied.
Mr Boult said the district was in an ‘‘economically desperate situation’’ and needed the additional travellers a relaxing of distancing requirements would bring.
The Ministry of Health declined to comment yester
amount of income in an industry that has zero income to cover the costs of carrying on the job of returning refunds for customers and redeeming their credits,’’ he said.
‘‘This provides a few months’ breathing room for the industry to continue to rightsize in the face of completely unforeseeable circumstances and make sure we can continue to do our job for the customers.’’ day, but Prof Baker said ‘‘ideally’’ both social distancing and masks would be used, but if public transport was not able to be used efficiently, then masks — which provided both ‘‘source control’’ and a protective barrier — should suffice.
Further, on aircraft — particularly jets — the ventilation system was effective, moving air up and down rather than forward and back, and through a HEPA filter to remove fine droplets.
It was estimated that travel agents handled about $6 billion in bookings last year and although margins were slim, the travel industry had been booming before Covid19.
‘‘We were yeartodate profitable in February; by the time we got to the end of June, three years of profit has evaporated.’’
About 5000 people worked in the sector at the start of the year.
‘‘I would say we’d be lucky to
‘‘So there hasn’t been very much transmission on aircraft — it has happened — but that’s part of the reason why aircraft are, probably, relatively safe as an indoor environment.
‘‘There’s no question transmission can happen in that environment, but if everyone’s wearing masks, and people are seated, then that’s going to provide a very good line of protection.’’
However, Prof Baker said the Government needed to
have half left and I’m not convinced that won’t shrink even further.’’
Agents were dealing with some very upset clients.
‘‘A lot of customers don’t understand that we don’t hold the cash, the supplier does, and if the supplier says their policy is a credit, we can’t offer a refund because we don’t have the cash to do that,’’ Mr Coombes said. ‘‘fine tune’’ the alert level system so it was ‘‘more nuanced’’ to include ‘‘actual practical rules’’ and introduce other levels, for example, 1.5.
‘‘It’s just at the moment the system is too crude.
‘‘We’d argue that there shouldn’t be travel in and out of Auckland while there’s active transmission, but that’s obviously a more sensitive subject — whether that should be a feature of 2.5 or not, we have argued that it should be.’’
Some of those suppliers were in administration and across the travel sector firms were understaffed and struggling to process customer inquiries.
‘‘None of the systems are engineered to work in reverse.’’
Agents were also fielding inquiries from people who had booked through online travel agents, which were difficult to contact and could provide little help. — The New Zealand Herald