There were five deaths and a record 12,011 new cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand on Friday.
Video / Jed Bradley / Dean Purcell / Michael Craig / George Heard
Opinion by Derek Cheng
Derek Cheng is a Multimedia Journalist for New Zealand’s Herald. He values holding those in power to account and shining a light on issues kept in the dark.
From yesterday, you could have had a cosy cuddle, or something more intimate, with someone special who later tested positive for Covid-19, but you wouldn't have to isolate if you didn't live with them.
But if you flew in from overseas with your vaccination pass and a negative testresult, you would be in a managed isolation facility for seven days.
The mandatory MIQ stay made sense when the Government was trying to keep the virus out of the community, but the start of phase 3 of the Omicron response plan signalled a new "living with Covid" era.
An international arrival now poses negligible risk to spreading the virus compared to what is already happening in the community.
That risk is put into sharp focus with the amount of cases who have flown in to New Zealand recently: eight cases on Thursday, compared to over 6000 recorded – and many more unrecorded – community cases. Yesterday there were 19 border cases, and more than 12,000 in the community.
Worth the $1 billion price tag?
MIQ has served its purpose, and for a hefty price to the taxpayer: more than $1 billion by now.
Figures released under the Official Information Act show the total cost of MIQ to the taxpayer, up until the end of August 2021, was $915.91 million.
The Government has also committed $136m to MIQ hotels from September 2021 to the end of June this year. Weekly operational costs are $14.5m.
This has been a justifiable cost, as the alternative would have been more virus among us and more Covid fatalities, though there is also a valid argument that the cost on the economy and people's freedoms has been too high.
And MIQ will still continue to serve a purpose: for high-risk travellers such as unvaccinated people flying in from countries where a new variant is rampant.
This is why it is still important to continue with on-arrival tests, and to genomically sequence every positive case, even though it is very unlikely that a new variant will emerge in New Zealand before anywhere else.
But MIQ is no longer required as it once was, nor does it have the broad public support it once did.
From Monday, Kiwis can fly in from Australia without an MIQ stay, but will still need to isolate for seven days. From March 14, that will apply to all Kiwis returning from anywhere in the world.
This is still an inconsistency: why should someone who is fully vaccinated and has a negative pre-departure test be legally required to self-isolate when cosy cuddlers of a known case from a different household don't have to, even though they might choose to?
Director general of health Ashley Bloomfield has provided advice to the Government on the isolating requirements for overseas arrivals, and it's reasonable to assume that he wants them to be eased.
The real question is whether they should be scrapped altogether and, as it is for non-household close contacts, it should be left to the traveller to decide what to do to protect themselves and their loved ones.
That would be the most consistent way forward, given that they're not as likely to have caught Omicron while travelling as those who live with a known case, who are the only contacts who are legally required to isolate. It would also be consistent with what the Government wants: enough protection with the least amount of disruption to people's lives.
The best time to let overseas arrivals go straight into the community would have been at the same time as the shift to phase 3. That may have been what the Government intended, but Omicron has spread faster than anticipated.
It wouldn't be without risk, as it would see additional cases in the community - but a negligible number.
And if the Government was concerned about health services being overwhelmed, reimposing isolation requirements on non-household close contacts would make more of a difference than reintroducing it for overseas arrivals.
Greater disease prevalence at border than in community - soon
Epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker says the Omicron has changed the MIQ rulebook, which should be based on the level of risk.
The positivity rate - the percentage of those tested who return a positive result - in the community was 11 per cent on Thursday, well above the 5 per cent mark considered by the World Health Organisation to represent widespread Covid-19.
At the height of the Omicron peak overseas, the positivity rate for overseas arrivals was 10 per cent, Baker said, but it has now dropped below 5 per cent.
"And it will keep going lower as countries overseas get further away from their Omicron peaks. There will be lower rates of disease among overseas arrivals than in the New Zealand population. We're not quite there yet, but we will get there," Baker said.
"At a certain point, an isolation period won't make much sense for people arriving in New Zealand who are fully vaccinated and have a pre-departure negative test - in the context of an Omicron wave in the community with tens of thousands of cases a day."
Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins says decisions on isolation requirements for overseas arrivals will be made within a month. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The MIQ or isolation buffer may well be needed in the future if a more virulent and infectious variant arrives at the border.
But in the meantime, it's a no-brainer for the Government to scrap isolation for overseas arrivals who are vaccinated, not only for health reasons, but also politically.
