Full border reopening in July possible
WELLINGTON: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is expected to announce today the country’s full border reopening will be brought forward three months from October to July.
It comes as Covid cases, thought to have plateaued, start to creep up again, as the country passes the 1 million mark and daily numbers in Auckland have risen 50% in the past three weeks.
Experts say the full border reopening will have minimal effect, as thousands of people are already arriving from all over the world.
The final part of the staged border reopening will open the country to all visa categories, including tourists, workers, families and students.
It will provide relief to industries crying out for workers, the tertiary education sector, and splitmigrant families from countries requiring visas, who will have been separated for nearly two and ahalf years.
The July timeframe also brings it in line with travellers under the accredited employer work visa, while allowing time for Immigration New Zealand to prepare to process the visas, with resources already stretched and potentially affecting the processing of oneoff residency applications.
It is expected Ms Ardern, followed by Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi, will be announcing the date change, along with further changes to immigration policy to address worker shortages, in speeches to Business NZ in Auckland today.
University of Otago epidemiologist Prof Michael Baker said bringing forward the full border reopening would have a minimal effect on case numbers and preventing new variants, given people were already travelling here from around the world.
He said the focus needed to be on quickly identifying new variants at the border, and a having a border closure plan should a highly deadly variant emerge.
University of Auckland senior lecturer and principal investigator at Te Punaha Matatini Dr Dion O’Neale said bringing the border reopening plan forward would not have any significant effect.
Almost every country in the world where travellers would arrive from in New Zealand had a similar background rate, or prevalence rate, to what New Zealand had — at present about 1% of the population infected at any point in time.
National Party immigration spokeswoman Erica Stanford said moving forward the reopening date was ‘‘great news’’, especially for the migrant families who had been split since the start of the pandemic.
Ms Stanford said she expected a further announcement on pathways to residency for skilled migrants, which had been shut off since the start of the pandemic and greatly hindered the country’s ability to attract workers.
She expected the Government would backtrack on timeframes to process ‘‘oneoff’’ 2021 residency applications, for migrants affected by the pandemic. The Government promised 80% of the expected 110,000 resident 2021 visa applications received would be processed within 12 months but they were on track to reach that by October 2023, she said.
Immigration adviser Ben De’Ath, of Regions Immigration Law & Recruitment, said that they were hoping to see movement on future pathways for residents.
‘‘We have got an immigration system where people we need — doctors, nurses, those with technical expertise — if they have other options, New Zealand is probably not the top of their pecking order.’’
The reason was the ‘‘fragmented’’ immigration system, which could not guarantee people pathways to residency, he said.
Immagine immigration adviser Iain MacLeod said New Zealand had become uninviting to migrants.
‘‘. . . we have made clear since 2017 migrants are no longer welcome here,’’ he said. — The
NEW Zealand yesterday recorded its millionth Covid19 case, as Otago and Southland cases topped 73,000.
While a sobering statistical milestone, the actual number of Covid19 cases that have occurred in New Zealand is expected to be much higher due to underreporting of rapid antigen test results and people who had the disease but were asymptomatic not doing tests.
A year ago, the national case number was 2288.
About 7% of New Zealand’s Covid cases have been reported in the southern region: out of the 20 district health board regions only the three Auckland boards, Waikato and Canterbury have recorded more cases than southern.
Nationally, a further 9173 new cases were reported yesterday, 889 of them in southern.
There were 14 further deaths reported, which included one in southern.
Since the pandemic began, 826 people who had Covid19 have died in New Zealand, 30 of them in the southern region.
Southern District Health Board Covid19 response lead Hywel Lloyd said that despite declining reported case numbers in the region in recent weeks, the course of the pandemic disease was far from completed.
‘‘As a community we need to accept that Covid19 is with us for now, and make choices accordingly,” he said.
‘‘The best way we can all protect ourselves and others, is to follow the simple actions that we have been talking about for a long time now: wear a mask when out in public and in social settings, practise good hand hygiene and physical distancing where appropriate and get your Covid19 booster shot.’’
SDHB medical officer of health Susan Jack said that influenza, largely absent from the South for the past two years due to border closures, was already being detected in the region.
“If you are eligible for a free flu vaccination, we would highly recommend that you go and get it now . . . a flu vaccination will reduce your risk of severe flu symptoms, reduce the likelihood that you will require hospital level care, and decrease the likelihood that you will pass the influenza virus on to others.”
There were 28 people who had Covid19 in southern hospitals yesterday: 17 were in Dunedin, two of whom were in intensive care, and the remaining 11 in Southland Hospital.