There’s the team of 5 million but a second NZ squad is still stuck overseas
The 1pm update yesterday was hosted by none other than Chris Hipkins, the ubiquitous Minister for Covid-19 Response.
Since he took the job, Hipkins has been one of the key parts of making Covid-19 news businessas-usual.
Readers may recall during the first flush of Covid-19 it was Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern who fronted everything. Hipkins, whose electorate is the seat of Remutaka in the Wellington region, is based relatively close to
Parliament and so was able to take a fair bit of the media load.
While all politicians naturally try to spin events to their advantage, Hipkins is a pretty straight shooter and does try to give as much information to media and the public as he can.
Also, pleasingly, DirectorGeneral of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield brought his own chart from home – not a flash A3 one like the prime minister’s, he was at pains to point out – but the A4 sheet did its job. Bloomfield was trying to show that, despite 75 cases reported yesterday, the trend was downwards.
‘‘If we look at the smoothing of the average over the last three days, it is clear that, on average, the daily case numbers are lower than the peak in the early 80s, but of course we will be watching carefully.’’
But something neither he nor Hipkins had a lot of information on was how it was that at least two students from Otago and Victoria universities respectively managed to get on planes to travel from Auckland back to their campuses during level 4. It was standard practice during the last lockdown that people weren’t even allowed into an airport without a good reason. Clearly something has failed this time.
Quite aside from the fact that travelling from one part of the country to another during level 4 means bubble-hopping, the issue is clearly of far greater significance now as everywhere south of the Bombay Hills has stepped down an alert level.
If someone in Auckland can just hop on a plane and fly elsewhere in the country, the rules clearly are not that tight.
The update also brought the unsurprising but disheartening news that many Kiwis stuck overseas are likely to have to wait
a few weeks before they can book MIQ vouchers, for a shot at two weeks in quarantine in order to get back into the country. The reason? Space needs to be held aside for positive cases on these shores in this current outbreak.
There will still be an avenue for people who have a compelling reason for an exemption to get a spot, but just being desperate to come home is not one of them.
And it is a salutary reminder that, despite all the talk of a team of 5 million, there are in fact two teams: Kiwis living here and those living overseas. And based on the various polls done on the issue, a big chunk of Kiwis onshore would be quite happy to just shut the borders full stop.
The politics of it for the Government are simple, but it really is a case of only having bad choices: let people with Covid isolate at home, or let more Kiwis be stuck overseas. MIQ may be a necessary line of defence, but there are no winners created by the system, just various degrees of losers.
We also got to a very important question: If school holidays start on October 4 and much of the country – and almost definitely Auckland – is in level 3 until close to that date, should school holidays be moved forward? After all, if Auckland is only just going into level 2 around that date, both parents and children will probably be keen to get back to work and school.
Interestingly, Hipkins wouldn’t rule it out – and not just in a ‘I don’t rule anything in or out way’ – but pointing out that school holidays were very difficult to move, but he would consider it should the circumstances warrant.
Lastly, Hipkins confirmed, as reported in Stuff on Tuesday morning, that the Government is doing its best to try to beg, borrow (but presumably not steal) more vaccines in the next week or so to keep up the pace of the rollout. We await further news on this with interest.