Covid testfree travel to Cooks on horizon

WELLINGTON: Holidays to the Cook Islands could be back as soon as next month.

Travel agents are already selling packages for the April school break.

Once there is Government signoff, New Zealanders will be able to travel to the Cooks and back without a Covid test.

But travel across the Tasman appears to be much further off.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is warning New Zealanders to expect a quarantinefree arrangement to be turned ‘‘on and off’’.

Cook Islands private sector task force chairman Fletcher Melvin said yesterday work on meeting the New Zealand Government’s requirements for a travel corridor was in its final stages.

One condition is for the country to have a Covid testprocessing centre because it takes too long to send samples to New Zealand.

Construction of the lab is set to be finished by the end of March and a technician is due to arrive soon.

‘‘It’s literally the last thing New Zealand wanted us to put in place,’’ Mr Melvin said.

‘‘And then we’ll have done everything possible, so then it’s up to New Zealand really to give us the goahead.’’

Another requirement is to have a contact tracing app.

The Cook Islands has one under development which is compatible with New Zealand’s Covid Tracer app.

Mr Melvin said the last of the Cook Islands’ government subsidies would run out in June, so businesses there were desperate to get New Zealand tourists back.

House of Travel and Flight Centre are already offering holidays to Rarotonga, including packages for the school holidays which start on April 17.

The Government will not confirm when twoway quarantinefree travel will resume, just that it will happen when ‘‘conditions allow’’ and protocols are in place.

This week, Covid19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said after 12 rounds of talks with Australia, officials were ‘‘concluding arrangements’’ and quarantinefree travel could start after health authorities on both sides of the Tasman agreed the public health risk was ‘‘acceptably low in both countries’’.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said work on the transtasman bubble was continuing but warned New Zealanders should expect for it to be ‘‘turned on and off’’.

She said the Government was not considering treating returnees differently despite some returning from countries which had Covid under control and others where it ran rampant.

Opposition parties said the Government’s ‘‘one size fits all approach’’ was the problem.

Act New Zealand leader David Seymour, who has been calling for a riskbased approach since August, said New Zealand had the control to accept quarantinefree travellers from trusted countries, such as Taiwan and Australia.

‘‘The amount of time it’s taken to allow people to enter New Zealand from countries that have no Covid is just absolutely inexplicable and inexcusable.’’

National Covid19 response spokesman Chris Bishop said after quarantinefree travel was established with the Cook Islands and Australia, the Government needed to start looking at processing arrivals based on risk.

He said once the Cooks corridor was operational, travel arrangements with other Pacific nations should happen quickly. — The New Zealand Herald