COMMENT:
The argument for keeping pre-departure tests is unlikely to win you many friends among travellers and tourism businesses. The fiddly and uncertain nature of the tests have made them the focus of frustrations - with many citing the tests as a key point of friction deterring tourists from visiting New Zealand over other destinations.
New Zealand is set to drop pre-departure test requirements by the end of July, at the latest.
However, some are making the case for keeping the tests while cases of covid 19 at the border remain high. One diagnostics company specialising in pre-departure tests says they are seeing positive rates of around 4 per cent among supervised tests.
The number of passengers refused-travel due to a positive result is not reflected in cases at the border, according to the Ministry of Health.
"As soon as the PDT is lifted, we can expect that 4% of travellers to make their way onto the flights and into the community," said a spokesperson.
Naturally the company, who did not wish to be named and whose business was 90 per cent predicated on these travel tests, had a strong bias against dropping them.
To their credit, many of the pinch points for entering New Zealand are not strictly test related but a compound of factors, including a shortage of flights and clunky digital declaration forms. As Paula Bennett pointed out in the Herald this weekend, the shortfalls are especially obvious having flown into Australia on their DPD. Paying AU$72 on return for a swap up the nose, is just adding insult to injury.
But to catastrophise that a move to drop tests would lead to a drop in confidence for passengers getting on planes is hard to believe. It's certainly not stopped the demand for travel elsewhere.
If New Zealand were to keep the requirement it would go against the direction of travel for many other countries.
This weekend the United States dropped the requirements for vaccinated travellers to produce a negative supervised Covid result.
As Dr William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University told Associate Press at the time, testing became pointless when community cases were higher than those entering the country.
"It's like telling someone not to pour a bucket of water in their swimming pool," he said.
In New Zealand this weekend there were 531 cases of Covid-19 detected at the border, versus 41433 in the community. From a public health perspective, the reason for pre-departure testing is no longer so pressing.
However, that's not to say that there wouldn't be a personal reason to take a pre-departure test.
In spite of no longer requiring pre-departure tests, in Australia many business and conference functions are asking where international travel is involved. Most states still require testing on arrival. Those organising these events would rather spare themselves the expense of flying travellers in for an event they will miss, and spare the travellers the discomfort of 7 days' hotel isolation.
Similarly for leisure travel, many pacific island destinations lifted their pre-departure testing requirements this winter. However countries including New Caledonia and Fiji still require testing on arrival. With the possibility of being moved to 'isolation quarters' or having to spend the week indoors, if you test positive on arrival it certainly won't be the planned beach holiday you expected.
So, yes, there could be a case for taking a test, and taking out comprehensive travel insurance, prior to any trip. But you will still be able to administer your own tests if you develop symptoms prior to travel.
The difference is about $6 for a test from a chemist versus the $80 that many supervised testing centres are charging. The move expected in the next few weeks is to get rid of test requirements, not getting rid of tests themselves.
