New Zealand to keep borders closed until country ‘vaccinated and protected’

MPs Return To Parliament For First Cabinet Meeting Of 2021
Jacinda Ardern said the country would explore bubbles with Australia and Pacific nations
Getty Images
Luke O'Reilly26 January 2021

New Zealand's borders will remain closed for most of 2021 while the country works to vaccinate its population, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said.

The island nation has yet to approve a vaccine, instead relying on a zero-Covid strategy to protect its population.

However, Ms Ardern said that a vaccine could finally be approved as early as next week.

It comes after the country confirmed its first case of the new coronavirus in the community in months.

"Given the risks in the world around us and the uncertainty of the global rollout of the vaccine, we can expect our borders to be impacted for much of this year," Ardern said at a news conference.

“For travel to restart, we need one of two things: we either need the confidence that being vaccinated means you don’t pass Covid-19 on to others – and we don’t know that yet; or we need enough of our population to be vaccinated and protected that people can safely re-enter New Zealand."

A Covid-19 testing centre at Marsden Point, New Zealand
AP

But both possibilities will take some time, she said.

“In the meantime, we will continue to pursue travel bubbles with Australia and the Pacific, but the rest of the world simply poses too great a risk to our health and our economy to take the risk at this stage”, Ms Ardern added.

The recent community case, in a woman who returned to New Zealand on December 30 and had tested positive for the South African strain of the virus after leaving a two-week mandatory quarantine, led Australia to immediately suspend a travel bubble with New Zealand for 72 hours.

Ms Ardern said the country's medicines regulator Medsafe was working towards granting provisional approval for the Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE vaccine.

The first vaccines are due to arrive in New Zealand by the end of the first quarter, but the government wanted everything is in place in case of an earlier arrival.

A tough lockdown and geographical isolation helped the country of 5 million virtually eliminate the novel coronavirus within its borders.

New Zealand reported 2 new cases of Covid-19 at its managed isolation facilities on Tuesday and no new community cases. The country has 65 active cases, 1,934 confirmed cases in all, and 25 deaths. 

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