Herd immunity needed before borders open

WELLINGTON: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has revealed New Zealand will need to have a certain level of Covid19 herd immunity before border restrictions are significantly altered.

But that may still be a long way off — the Minister of Covid19 Response Chris Hipkins said some travel restrictions would likely remain in place for another 12 to 18 months.

Speaking to media yesterday morning, Ms Ardern said the Government was still working through its immunisation strategy, which is centred around a Covid19 vaccine.

‘‘Ultimately, 2021 will be the year of the vaccine,’’ she said.

But Ms Ardern said New Zealand’s goal is to be at a certain level of immunity before the Government considers changing its border restrictions.

People would need to be able to safely go about their daytoday lives before quarantine rules were eased, she said.

She said the question was: ‘‘What will it take us to get, through immunisation, up to that herd immunity [level]?’’

Once that question had been answered, she said New Zealanders would be able to be less worried about what is happening at the border.

Mr Hipkins said that work was under way, given the vaccines that continued to emerge, to decide how much of the population would need to be vaccinated before travel restrictions could be eased.

He said some form of travel restrictions would likely remain in place for the next year to 18 months.

He added that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade was talking to other countries about an international system to have people certifiably vaccinated.

‘‘We do need to know if someone has been vaccinated or not. We would want to know that as part of our overall protection measures.’’

He said that would likely be the subject of a lot of diplomatic discussions but part of that could be a technology solution.

The NZ Covid app could not only show whether someone had been tested and the result of that test, but could also show whether someone had been vaccinated, and by which vaccine.

■ There were two new cases of Covid19 in managed isolation reported by the Ministry of Health yesterday.

One previously confirmed case has also now been reclassified as historical, meaning there are 53 active cases of Covid19 in New Zealand.

Mr Hipkins said the Air New Zealand crew with the person who tested positive in China would arrive back in New Zealand this morning, when they would be isolated and receive fasttracked testing.

Mr Hipkins said the Government had still not ruled out the possibility the person caught Covid19 in New Zealand. — The New Zealand Herald/RNZ