Editorial: Nerves over stuttering start to travel bubble

Passengers arriving from Sydney at the Wellington International Airport on April 19 at the start of the transtasman travel bubble. Photo / AP

EDITORIAL:

The stuttering start to the transtasman travel bubble, with Western Australia dealing with a community outbreak, is an early blow to the air corridor, but not a surprising one.

Pictures from Perth of people panic-buying in a snap lockdown were a marked contrast with the euphoria of families reuniting a week previously.

Passengers who have arrived in New Zealand from Western Australia have been going through contact-tracing.

So far there have been few signs of further community spread after a Melbourne man, having completed his hotel quarantine, stayed five days in Perth. The man, a person he stayed with, and another person tested positive. Authorities were awaiting the results of hundreds of tests.

But people need to keep the health risk in perspective. Experts say the odds are statistically low of any infectious people travelling between Australia and New Zealand. There is still a quarantine border between the two countries and the rest of the world that works in the vast majority of cases.

People were well and truly warned that measures would have to be taken if there was any breach and authorities have planned out the processes. There was always a possibility of disruption to travellers using the bubble.

What will be more infectious than the virus here will be the sense of unease over the Australasian travel link amongst the general public.

The new two-way quarantine-free travel system has been terrific for people with family on both sides of the ditch. It's something of a lifesaver for tourism operators and a boost for airlines. And it is probably a necessary travel trial run for authorities.

But many people in New Zealand do not appear to see the point of it.

For them, safety comes first and the best guarantees of safety are closed borders and vaccination.

Vaccine supplies have been an issue for a number of governments and it is to be hoped that the rollout here ramps up quickly as promised. Aside from reducing the risk of virus leakage from the border, vaccination is the most urgent task.

The disaster hitting India, which is setting record infection numbers, illustrates that all regions need to concentrate on snuffing out the virus through vaccination. New variants can cause sudden surges and spread elsewhere quickly.

A Financial Times analysis of Britain's vaccination programme said that "as each age group became eligible for vaccinations, its share of all cases has fallen away. The share of cases among the over-80s has fallen by 80 per cent since vaccinations began". The United States has recorded only a few thousand after-dose infections among the many millions vaccinated.

While we slowly distribute initial shots to our small population, the European Union is getting millions of extra Pfizer/BioNTech jabs this quarter, bringing its total order to 600 million in 2021. It is signing a deal for 1.8 billion doses of the vaccine to cover this year and the next two.

South Korea is purchasing 40 million more Pfizer doses. Like other countries in Asia its vaccination rate so far is low at about 4 per cent.

Millions of the vaccine's booster doses are being snapped up for the coming years in something of an ''arms" race. Canada has agreements for 65 million over the next two years.

Pfizer has been scrambling to boost production and expects to deliver 2.5 billion global doses this year. But it is being hoarded in rich countries after issues with alternative vaccines.

The sooner New Zealand's rollout is completed, the quicker people will have peace of mind.