Quarantine rules in New Zealand to be partially eased

NEW ZEALAND’S government has announced it will start to end quarantine requirements for incoming travellers and reopen its borders.

Since the start of the pandemic, New Zealand has enacted some of the world’s strictest border controls. Most incoming travellers need to spend 10 days in a quarantine hotel room run by the military, a requirement that has created a bottleneck at the border.

The measures were initially credited with saving thousands of lives and allowed New Zealand to eliminate or control several outbreaks.

But, increasingly, the border controls have been viewed as out-of-step in a world where the virus is becoming endemic, and in a country where the Omicron variant is already spreading.

The bottleneck forced many New Zealanders abroad to enter a lottery-style system to try and secure a spot in quarantine and passage home.

The shortcomings of the system were highlighted over the past week by pregnant New Zealand journalist Charlotte Bellis, who was stranded in Afghanistan after New Zealand officials initially rejected her application to return home to give birth. After international publicity, officials backed down and offered her a spot in quarantine, which she has accepted.

Vaccinated New Zealanders returning from Australia will no longer need to go into quarantine from the end of this month, and vaccinated New Zealanders returning from the rest of the world can skip quarantine by midMarch. They will still be required to isolate at home. However, most tourists will need to wait until October before they can enter the country without a quarantine stay. And anybody who is not vaccinated will still be required to go through quarantine.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, inset, said she knows many people associate the border controls with heartache but they have undeniably saved lives.

The president of the Philippines is self-isolating after being exposed to a member of his household staff who had Covid-19, but Rodrigo Duterte, 76, has twice tested negative since then.

South Korea has begun enforcing a new coronavirus policy centred on rapid testing as health officials reported a record 22,907 of new infections following the Lunar New Year holiday. This is a five-fold increase from daily cases seen in mid-January.