Covid-19 is still raging across the world and, while New Zealand has been relatively unaffected, ACT believes there's more needed in terms of managed isolation, saying there aren't enough rooms and pushing for private MIQ facilities to be allowed.
ACT leader David Seymour says, "under ACT's plan, owners of currently mothballed hotels could seek a licence to operate managed isolation according to strict criteria. These criteria would make safer managed isolation than the standards
met by the government. The criteria are:
- Only those with a negative pre-departure test would be eligible;
- Only vaccinated travellers could use this MIQ;
- Only vaccinated people could be on-site, regardless of their employment status;
- All people on site would have to be saliva tested every second day; and
- Providers must be licensed and could lose their licence for breaching these conditions.
''Dramatically safer'
“These criteria are much stricter than the government’s MIQ scheme, which takes unvaccinated travellers and tests them only three times in 14 days, and still can’t guarantee that all workers on site are vaccinated or tested."
Seymour believes there is more demand than capacity saying “Introducing the cohort model, where MIQ hotels fill up for a couple of days before being sealed for the duration of quarantine, has reduced the effective capacity of MIQ. If few people arrive on the days that a hotel is open for business, it must operate below capacity for the remaining fortnight.
"However, the cohort model has also made MIQ dramatically safer. If there is an outbreak within a hotel," he says. "it can be contained without tracing people who have left over previous days, because nobody has. The cohort model is a threat and an opportunity for expanding safe access to New Zealand."
About 21,000 New Zealanders have left the country since the opening of the trans-Tasman bubble and are yet to come back.
Considering options
There are only about4,500 MIQ rooms in the country. The government has been in discussions about purpose-built MIQ facilities as an option, Minister Chris Hipkins saying earlier in the month that there are different options going forward and the government was considering them.
According to the new policy, there would be an expansion on the current MIQ network by allowing private providers who can meet the strict standards to become a licensed MIQ for lower risk travellers.
An average of seven cases per week arrives at the border. and the Ministry of Health reported two new cases in MIQ today.