The US has lifted restrictions on travel from a long list of countries, setting the stage for emotional reunions and providing a boost for the airline and tourism industries. Photo / AP
EDITORIAL:
"Get ready for take-off" urges Air New Zealand's ad, and many Kiwis will be daring to dream they will be able to fly far afield next year.
The national carrier's promotion succinctly summarises some joys of international travel: seeing friends in person and catching up with family, exploring foreign cities, chilling at a resort, or waking up somewhere else in a different time zone.
It can't come soon enough for businesses which depend on making such plans a reality.
By February it will have been two years since the country's first Covid-19 cases. Two years of isolation from all but near-neighbour countries. Two years of hard times for the aviation and tourism industries. Two years of many personal goals put on hold.
The Government is under increasing pressure to speed up the return of tourist travel by first allowing returning fully vaccinated Kiwis the chance to self-isolate at home, rather than go through MIQ, before Christmas.
"Letting vaccinated Kiwis return home would send a clear signal to airlines that New Zealand is serious about opening our border, and that we will be catching up to the rest of the world in the near future," said Justin Tighe-Umbers, executive director of the Board of Airline Representatives.
The Government deserves a degree of understanding and patience for trying to navigate uncharted waters with its strategy in a careful way to avoid obvious rocks. There's certainly a lot to weigh up, and polls show a majority of the general public continues to be cautious about the way forward.
Te Pūnaha Matatini's Covid modeller Professor Michael Plank has argued there's still a need to minimise the chance of importing new infections from overseas.
Covid Response Minister Chris Hipkins has said the Government is "moving towards having more vaccinated people able to self-isolate at home instead of in MIQ in the first quarter of 2022.
"Our priority at this stage is to safely transition to the new traffic light system first and bed that in before adding the additional risk of international arrivals immediately entering the community."
But there appears now to be a gap in logic over managed isolation. If people in Auckland who actually are infected with the coronavirus can now isolate at home, surely fully vaccinated returnees, masked up for travel, and who have passed through testing regimes, are lower risk.
Scrapping MIQ for vaccinated returnees would allow currently frustrated thousands to come home and mean less stress on the border system. Another factor is the increase in deaths among known infected people isolating at home since the change was made.
The upcoming vaccine pass will be used on domestic flights over summer, before international flights resume.
However, much as people might want to travel, plenty of New Zealanders will still be writing it off next year because of the uncertain pandemic outlook. They will want to sit back and see how it goes.
Other Kiwis may be planning cautious trips, limited in scope, such as to a single country with high levels of vaccination.
This will come down to tolerance of risk and how travellers can try to reduce it. The transtasman travel bubble became a debacle, with people stranded amid Australian outbreaks. Some Covid-related travel mishaps and unexpected costs are certainly possible, and the issue of adequate insurance cover will have to be worked on.
Vaccination, though, is a game-changer if seen as part of other protective measures. Vaccination-required flights, wearing high-quality masks and use of rapid tests should now be normal for travel.
There are both positive and negative signs overseas over the direction of the pandemic.
Europe, which managed summer travel this year but is now in a worse situation with approaching winter, shows it's still variable. Although vaccination supplies have increased over the past year in the developed world, other areas will be attempting to catch up all next year.
However, the arrival of two antiviral pills from Merck and Pfizer should make a major difference in the treatment of early Covid symptoms. There are also new treatments for severe cases. Children will be able to be vaccinated. Booster shots will improve vaccinated people's immunity. The mRNA vaccines can be adapted to take on any new dangerous variants.
From this distance and after long isolation, it's hard to get a sense of what travel under these conditions would be like. But many will be ready for take-off.
Source: Ministry of Health (as at -)
About 130,000 water connections in Northland will be affected by new plans.
