The public health experts have made more than one call for border management, this comes after they had singled out more than a dozen failures in New Zealand’s border control. It is a team from Otago University that made the argument that New Zealand
A team of Otago University researchers argued New Zealand still didn’t have the best border control they could have against Covid 19. They gave New Zealand 5 ways as to how they can control their bored against letting the infection come into the country.
The team did an analysis and had identified 13 border failures along with 6 failures which had happened in isolation and quarantine. The largest cluster in Auckland was the one in August where there was 179 identified cases and 3 death. The team did agree on the fact that New Zealand had done very well during the pandemic.
The team quoted that “This green zone means that our biosecurity status will become more intertwined with Australia, Therefore, it is even more important to lower the risk of border failures that could disrupt green zone travel, especially if outbreaks are not initially well contained. This situation gives us the opportunity to benchmark our current measures with those used by the eight states and territories in Australia.”
One of the five suggestions were that there be a slashing the number of infected travelers coming into the isolation facilities. The second one being the travelers are to be offered the vaccine on arrival, this is only if they are not vaccinated.
The researchers further suggested New Zealand should aim to have a “failure rate” that compared to Australia. They stated that “As of March 29, New Zealand’s MIQ system has a seven-day rolling average of four new positive cases per day – indicating that the risk of transmission within MIQ may still be substantial, Conducting a benchmarking exercise of MIQ and wider border management measures in Australian states and territories could identify potential improvements in policies and practices in both countries.”
