After nearly two years of strict international travel restrictions in response to the coronavirus pandemic, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced last week that a phased reopening of borders will begin later this month.
Until last October, the Labour-Green Party government had a ‘zero-COVID’ policy for much of the pandemic, meaning that except for a brief ‘travel bubble’ with the Australia, most foreign travelers were banned from entering the country.
Thousands of citizens and visa holders desperate to return have been forced to make emergency calls to the government or join a lottery system in an attempt to secure a place in limited managed isolation and quarantine facilities ( MIQ) in dedicated hotels.
The decision to reopen the border is in line with the government’s pro-business agenda, like those internationally, to “open up” the economy, forcing people to “live with” the virus.
Ardern told his audience, convened by lobby group BusinessNZ: “With our community better protected, we need to look to the importance of reconnecting. Families and friends need to get together. Our businesses need skills to grow. Exporters must travel to establish new relationships. It’s time to get moving again.
Far from being “better protected”, the country is experiencing an escalation of the Omicron outbreak, first detected in the community on January 23. On the day of the Ardern border announcement, the Department of Health reported 174 new cases. On Saturday, there were 243, the highest number of daily cases since the start of the pandemic. Modeling expert Michael Plank noted that the numbers had quadrupled in a week “and that’s pretty rapid growth if it continues”.
However, the government has said it does not intend to phase out Omicron, but to “slow the spread”. The country is operating under the ‘red’ framework of the three-tier ‘traffic light’ system for managing COVID, which includes minimum measures of mask-wearing, social distancing and use of vaccine certificates, but not locking.
From February 27, fully vaccinated New Zealanders will be allowed to return from Australia and self-isolate at home for 10 days, avoiding an MIQ facility. They will also be responsible for taking two rapid COVID antigen tests.
A fortnight later, New Zealand citizens will be allowed to return from elsewhere in the world under the same conditions, as will their families. In response to growing pressure from employers over labor shortages, designated “skilled workers” will be able to enter while a working holiday program resumes in time for the horticultural harvest.
From April, non-nationals with visas and up to 5,000 paying international students can enter and bypass quarantine. Tourists from the UK, US, Australia and other visa-free countries will be allowed entry in July. Tourists from the rest of the world will be allowed to enter from October.
The system, based essentially on individual “personal responsibility”, carries risks. The MIQ facilities, which have been directly responsible for keeping around 2,000 cases out of the country, will only be used for unvaccinated travellers. The self-isolation period will align with current parameters for managing close contacts of cases. The government has indicated that as the epidemic develops, the isolation period will be reduced from 10 to 7 days.
Scientific experts have given cautious answers to the plans. Epidemiologist Michael Baker said the “big question” was about self-isolation, with its greatly reduced testing requirements, which requires “a high confidence model”. Dr. Emily Harvey told the Science Media Center that she was concerned about the proposed self-testing regimen. “Unfortunately, the proposed testing regimen (rapid antigen tests on day 0/1 and day 5/6) is underpowered and risks missing a large number of infections,” she warned.
In fact, the border reopenings were not driven by public health considerations, but under pressure from New Zealand and the international community to remove all remaining restrictions on business and travel operations, for ” reconnect to the world” and bring “Ordinary” back to life. Demands to dismantle the MIQ system have been growing for months.
The clamor boiled over last month with the case of Charlotte Bellis, a five-month-pregnant New Zealand journalist who had to approach the Taliban to stay in Afghanistan after her application for an emergency MIQ place was rejected by authorities. . The case received negative publicity in the international media, generally implying that the Taliban were more “humane” than the New Zealand government.
Bellis, a former Al Jazeera reporter, wrote an open letter to New Zealand Herald on January 29, drawing attention to his plight. Bellis’ case, based on her need for proper medical attention, was entirely legitimate. She was forced to leave Qatar, where she was usually based, because it is illegal to be pregnant and unmarried there. She and her partner, Jim Huylebroek, first moved to her native Belgium, but she was unable to stay there as she was not a resident there.
Bellis’ application was rejected by Immigration New Zealand as it was deemed out of time. In a bureaucratic rush, he was then told, including in a calculated public statement by COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins, to reapply under different criteria.
Bellis made it clear that she was not opposed to the border control system as such, but wanted to use her profile to “try to shift the dial towards a more empathetic response”. Only 29 emergency requests involving pregnancies have been successful since last June, a success rate of 13%. 30 other cases concerning pregnancies are currently pending. A lawyer representing these women says rejections are usually only overturned “once judicial and/or media pressure” is applied.
Unsurprisingly, Bellis was suddenly offered a place at MIQ and a return flight booking by the government last week as he sought to bury the controversy. Meanwhile, she had become the center of a standoff over the border quarantine system.
Defenders of the Ardern government moved quickly to try to discredit Bellis. Former Labor MP Darien Fenton tweeted: “There is something deeply questionable about this story. I don’t accept that Afghanistan is the only place she can go. Daily blog editor Martyn Bradbury piled on, describing Bellis as a “prestige Karen” and occasionally Guardian contributor Morgan Godfrey tweeted that she was a “propaganda agent”.
The case was inevitably seized upon by sections of the media and the political establishment who demanded the reopening of borders and the dismantling of the MIQ system, regardless of the dangers. Far-right ACT party leader David Seymour said the MIQ “doesn’t work, takes up precious resources and is unimaginably cruel”. The National Party, which had launched an ‘end MIQ’ petition before Christmas, only differed on when to say, in light of Omicron, that the government should announce ‘a clear plan to end misery of the MIQ”.
Media commentators lined up. Jane Patterson of Radio NZ described the MIQ as a “festering political boil”. Things Political editor Luke Malpass said border controls had imposed a “severe limitation on individual freedoms”, while “squeezing the economy”. “The tune of elimination”, he said cynically, “has had its swan song and the band will not get back together”.
In fact, with tens of thousands of students sent back to schools, workers in unsafe workplaces and borders reopened, a calamity is looming. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation has forecast cases peaking at 80,000 a day, with more than 400 dead by the middle of the year.
Meanwhile, there is growing anxiety and opposition among workers over the pro-corporate response to the pandemic. As the Socialist Equality Group (NZ) noted in its recent open letter, “Join the fight to stop the pandemic and save lives in 2022! “These emerging sentiments must be transformed into a working class political movement to eliminate COVID-19, directed against the government and the entire capitalist political establishment.
