Green flights on hold as cases in NSW surge
Hipkins says escalated risk means travel bubble reopening must wait
Green flights due to open up from New South Wales will be held off, after the Australian state recorded 44 new community infections and tightened its lockdown rules yesterday.
The travel pause with the state was due to be lifted at 11.59pm last night.
But Covid Minister Chris Hipkins said yesterday there was an escalated risk in NSW and no one wanted to see the virus come into New Zealand.
“We won’t be resuming green flights from [NSW] until we’re confident that the risk there is contained.”
NSW has tightened its Covid-19 restrictions, with Premier Gladys Berejiklian saying of the 44 new cases announced yesterday, 29 had been out and about in the community.
“When you see a number like 29 who have been infectious for all of the time in the community, or part of the time in the community, it tells us that in the next few days, those numbers are going to go up.”
The state’s stay-at-home orders have been tightened, with exercise now reduced from 10 to two people and only one person allowed to leave home for essential shopping.
“NSW is facing the biggest challenge we have faced since the pandemic started and I don’t say that lightly,” Berejiklian said.
She warned that unless there was a dramatic change in the numbers, the three-week lockdown due to end next Friday, July 16, would be extended.
Meanwhile Hipkins said the New Zealand Government would look to resume flights from the state, but people on those flights would have to spend 14 days in managed isolation.
Up to 1000 places in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) that had been held for contingency would be set aside for those people, Hipkins said. There would be no MIQ charge for those returning from NSW. All MIQ bookings would still be honoured.
The earliest those flights with a 14-day MIQ stay would start would be in three days’ time, Hipkins said.
He said about 2000 to 2500 people had been planning to come back on the cancelled green flights. Some of them might choose to stay in New South Wales after hearing they will have to spend 14 days in MIQ.
Airlines should be able to let people on those green flights know within 24 hours when they could fly home and go into MIQ.
He wouldn’t say whether NSW should have locked down sooner, saying that was a call for officials there.
But green flights from Queensland were allowed to resume from 11.59pm last night, Hipkins said.
In response to reports of people arriving in NZ without the required pre-departure test, he said border staff were picking up rule-breakers.
About 50 per cent of arrivals were being checked to see if they had had pre-departure tests, and scaling up the checking was under way.
Meanwhile a fishing vessel carrying two infected sailors is expected back in NZ early next week.
The Viking Bay’s docking site was still being finalised but unwell crew will be transferred into MIQ. NZ had no new cases and one historical case yesterday.