"You're looking at a whole day, or more, of travel to New Zealand. He said a negative pre-departure test should only be a requirement for long-haul flights, particularly those departing from countries in the Northern Hemisphere. He said while it would have minimal impact on community transmission rates, it would reduce the number of infectious people on the flight and slow the arrival of new variants into New Zealand. A RAT test that's administered while people are waiting to board the flight and if they test positive then their travel is deferred for a period." "One of the options would be having a service that is provided by the airline at the airport. However, according to Ministry of Health data, the positivity rate of international arrivals is now 4 percent compared to 2-3 percent previously.īaker wanted pre-departure testing reinstated and said airlines could take the reins. When the government scrapped pre-departure tests, it said it was not anticipating a significant increase in Covid cases. "By the time you know that you're infected in New Zealand you've already infected people here, and so this is a form of surveillance that's not actually slowing the arrival of infected people into New Zealand."
Michael Baker. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone International travellers need to complete rapid-antigen tests (RATs) on the day or day after they arrive in New Zealand and again five or six days later. "We are effectively seeding the country much more rapidly with new variants from overseas." "We've got less of a lag from when new variants emerge overseas and start to become dominant before they arrive in New Zealand," he said. University of Otago epidemiologist Michael Baker said it was a bad sign and meant new-variants of Covid-19 would enter the country quicker than ever before. The Ministry said today the number of new cases that had recently travelled overseas was 359.
The number of average daily border cases was 65 in the week before pre-departure testing was dumped last week it increased to 307. Covid-19 border cases have increased nearly fivefold since the government scrapped pre-departure testing for international arrivals in June.
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