NSW flight pause affects thousands

WELLINGTON: Thousands of travellers will have their plans disrupted after the Government chose to pause flights from New South Wales for 48 hours as a precautionary response to two community cases there.

The pause in the transtasman bubble is only for flights from NSW, and it started from 11.59pm yesterday.

The move was welcomed by Te Punaha Matatini principal investigator Prof Michael Plank, who said leaving the door open would have run the risk of importing a case into New Zealand from NSW.

“There are a few red flags, the obvious one being no clear epidemiological link to the border [case].

‘‘There’s also the positive test in the sewage, and the fact that the person has been to a lot of locations of interest,” he said.

“Taken together, that means there’s a risk there could be quite a lot of cases out there.

‘‘This decision is very much in line with the traffic light system that the Government set out for managing the bubble, which is to pause travel for a couple of days in a situation like this until we’re confident that the outbreak is contained.”

Covid19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said the risk was low, even though about 6000 people have flown to New Zealand from NSW since the cases in Sydney emerged.

He urged them to isolate and call Healthline on 0800 3585453 if they have been to the NSW locations of interest.

“This isn’t a decision we take lightly,” Mr Hipkins said.

“We do acknowledge this has the potential to disrupt people’s travel . . . We are erring on the side of caution.”

As there are several daily flights from Sydney to New Zealand, thousands of travellers will have their plans disrupted.

Mr Hipkins said people flying from New Zealand to NSW should be flyerbeware and weigh the risks of travelling.

NSW has not gone into lockdown but restrictions have been put in place, including compulsory masks in indoor venues and no gatherings larger than 20 people.

Genome sequencing has linked a community case in Sydney, a man in his 50s, to a traveller who arrived from the US, who was moved to a quarantine facility on April 28.

One of the man’s household contacts, a woman in her 50s, returned a positive test yesterday.

It remains unclear how they caught the virus, meaning there could be several links in the chain of transmission between them and the traveller, who might still be in the community without knowing they have the virus.

It is believed neither the man nor the woman had recently travelled overseas, worked in a hotel quarantine, border or health role, or come into contact with someone who did.

Anyone who tried to fly to New Zealand from NSW through a different state might be picked up by border agencies’ datamatching systems, Mr Hipkins said, though these systems were not quick enough to catch a traveller who broke bubble rules recently by travelling from Perth.

One new case of Covid19 and three potential historical cases were reported in managed isolation facilities yesterday. — RNZ