Pilots wearing face masks arrive at Sydney's Kingsford Smith Airport after landing on an Air New Zealand flight. Photo / Getty Images
Pilots wearing face masks arrive at Sydney's Kingsford Smith Airport after landing on an Air New Zealand flight. Photo / Getty Images
Editorial
EDITORIAL
One of the new Government's challenges will be how to ease back into more contact with the wider world over the next year.
So far there have been more warning signs than hopeful ones that this can happen safely before a Covid-19 vaccine.
The first move towards a transtasmantravel bubble hit trouble straight away last week, with 17 New Zealanders detained when they headed to Melbourne after arriving in Sydney.
About 230 Kiwis headed across to Australia. People returning home still have to go through quarantine here.
The one-way non-quarantine travel is meant to be for trips into New South Wales, the ACT and Northern Territory. Victoria is still under restrictions while recovering from a severe coronavirus outbreak.
"Victoria has not agreed to a travel bubble arrangement with New Zealand and did not expect to receive international travellers as a result of NSW making that arrangement," Victoria's Department of Health and Human Services said. "We expect NZ passengers who have not undertaken quarantine will not be permitted to board flights in Sydney bound for Melbourne."
The missteps show countries are in a trial-and-error phase of sorting out what works and what is required. A loophole was found at the first opportunity.
The transtasman travel bubble has taken months of talks to partially get off the ground. A carefully considered system needs to be in place for any travel bubbles with our Pacific island neighbours. Popular tourist island territories such as French Polynesia, Iceland and Aruba have seen case spikes since allowing tourists back in July, even with requirements for negative tests.
Europe's experience generally with reopening for tourists and then suffering a second wave is not encouraging.
Hawaii, opening up to tourism with testing may not be the best idea. Islands like Aruba, French Polynesia, and Iceland had seen terrific control of COVID until tourists, fully tested tourists, arrived and then COVID rates exploded. pic.twitter.com/47dLMMFUcq
Research has shown that air travel is reasonably safe if people wear masks, despite it involving a long time in an enclosed space. A United States Department of Defence study found that aircraft ventilation systems filter the air well and remove particles that could transmit viruses.
It did not cover situations of people directly coughing on to someone else or picking up the virus from surfaces. Other reports have documented people catching it, perhaps when removing masks or using toilets.
The best news in the past week was probably that two big air hubs – Singapore and Hong Kong – are close to forming a travel bubble. Other countries will watch to see what works, and what protocols and technology are used.
Travellers will have to show a negative test for the virus within 72 hours of departure. There will be designated flights and people will not be able to transit to somewhere else.
Leong Hoe Nam, an infectious diseases expert, told the South China Morning Post that it was a "calculated gamble", but said its success was a matter of putting the right virus-detection procedures in place.
Countries and territories such as South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan have been among the best in the world at dealing with Covid-19 with proven test and trace regimes.
It is easy to envision a regional network of travel between low-Covid countries opening up next year, with hopefully common rules for flights, testing, perhaps a form of monitoring and rules for returns. Some form of quick, accurate and cheap testing would help the process.
In the meantime there have been "flights to nowhere" in Australia and aircraft dining on grounded planes.
Plenty of Kiwis and people elsewhere are suffering some cabin fever.
