TLDR & TLDL: The Skegg report due for a formal response from the Government later this morning has solidified New Zealand’s commitment (all by itself now) to stay the Covid elimination course, at least until everyone has been offered two shots of the vaccine.
Sir David Skegg confirmed in this NZ Herald interview with Derek Cheng published this morning there was no clear date or vaccination threshold for border reopening and he did not expect such an opening until next year.
“There is no way of determining this [level of vaccination coverage] with any precision. We assume the re-opening of borders will start in a phased and carefully monitored way early next year, when the vaccination rollout is completed. Then we will discover whether the vaccination coverage achieved, together with our recommended precautions, such as rapid testing of travellers on arrival, plus strengthened public health and social measures, will be enough to maintain elimination of Covid-19.” Sir David Skegg.
New Zealand will be alone in the world trying to keep Covid from spreading in the community until after its vaccine rollout. New South Wales has effectively given up on the elimination strategy and is now trying targeted lockdowns and public health measures such as mask-wearing instead of widespread NZ-style ‘level four’ hard lockdowns.
Covid-19 Minister Chris Hipkins yesterday foreshadowed more level four lockdowns if even a single case of the delta variant was to be spread in the community. (RNZ)
"Even the gold standard of contact tracing isn't always enough to keep the delta variant at bay. We've seen that in New South Wales where they've previously stamped out Covid-19 cases very efficiently with their contact tracing system alone, but they've not managed to achieve that this time. Sydney, Australia's largest city, is now in its seventh week of restrictions including stay-at-home order."
"A short, sharp lockdown is more likely to be successful in the current context than a longer, more drawn out, lower level response. So my message to all New Zealanders is that this is not over, that we are still gonna be dealing with Covid-19 for a while yet. Further lockdowns are possible, if they were to happen they would happen as they did previously with very short notice. And everybody should have a plan for what they would do in those circumstances." Chris Hipkins.
My reading of this: The combination of our reaffirmed Fortress NZ and elimination strategies means we’re unlikely to reopen the Trans-Tasman bubble until well into next year, given both the Australian and our vaccine rollouts are barely a third of the way through and Australia has a higher vaccine hesitancy rate than us.
Travel beyond Australia in any sort of non-MIQ or remotely normal way seems even further off into the future. I wouldn’t be booking any tickets into Asia or the Northern Hemisphere before late 2023.
The PM is due to give the Government’s formal response to the Skegg report later this morning at the ‘Reconnecting New Zealanders to the World forum’ in Wellington. I’ll be there with Lynn Grieveson, my brilliant wife). Happy life. :)
Scoops and other news breaking this morning
Signs o’ the times news
Useful longer reads
Some fun things
Ka kite anō
Bernard
Dawn Chorus: Fortress NZ staying closed for now