The travel window between New Zealand and Australia closes tonight. and the government is urging all those who haven't booked to act immediately if they want to secure a place.
“When announcing a temporary suspension of the travel bubble with Australia last week, the government provided a seven-day grace period for eligible travellers in states and territories other than New South Wales to return,” Acting Covid Response Minister Ayesha Verrall said.
Travellers have to produce a negative Covid-19 PCR or RT-PCR pre-departure test, the appropriate documentation and travellers from Victoria must also isolate at home until a negative test is returned. If travellers cannot provide proof of a negative pre-departure test, they will not be allowed to travel.
Verrall said agencies had been working closely with airlines and had advised demand dropped off in the last couple of days, with cancellations now outweighing new bookings and 3000 seats still available.
Of all the available seats on flights from Australia to New Zealand, less than half have been occupied
Coming home
“Extra flights have been put on where required, for example from Brisbane and Melbourne, and extra capacity has opened up on flights from Perth as people have cancelled their flights. Travellers also have the option to transit via other airports in Australia." Says Verrall
She also said that a decision based on this advice has been made and the window will close at 11.59pm (NZT) tonight, Friday, July 30.
As for those itching to come home from New South Wales, although flights are being planned, returnees from the state will need to spend 14 days in managed isolation hotels. Spaces in the facilities have been made available,
“More than 1500 rooms in MIQ have so far been made available from the first two managed return phases – accommodating an estimated 2100 people, including more than 300 urgent and exceptional cases," Verrall said.
Contingency hotel places
The minister also confirmed 500 MIQ additional rooms have been allocated from contingency, between August 9-22.
“To manage and prioritise bookings, a registration of interest process has been established for these rooms, using a form on the Unite Against COVID-19 travel website.
Registrations opened at 10 am today and will close at 2 pm on Tuesday, August 3.
While the New Zealand government is working on repatriation, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday announced the highest numbers the state has seen so far, with239 new local cases.
The state is now allowing police to fine people not wearing face-coverings $500 and has given them the power to shut down non-compliant businesses.
The state leader was defending her lockdown decisions.
Fending off Delta
"If you look at other places around the world and the way the Delta strain has taken over communities, even when vaccination rates have been higher than ours, we can take some comfort in the fact that today we haven’t had thousands and thousands of cases, thousands of people in hospital and many more deaths, and that’s what these lockdowns are about,” she said.
Just this morning Queensland’s health minister, Yvette D’Ath, said a student at a Brisbane school tested positive to Covid-19.
Just over 14% of Australians are fully vaccinated and 31.68% have received their first dose of vaccine. There are currently 2857 active cases in Australia, a huge hit for a country made up of 25,788,215 people. An even more painful number is the 923 lives that have been lost so far in New Zealand's closest neighbour.
While the gold medal in the Men's Sevens Olympic final is worth celebrating in Fiji, it's the number of cases that has shaken the country.
218 lives lost
With fewer than a million people in its population, the country is experiencing some of the most frightening numbers of cases of Covid-19. While 6,706 cases have recovered there are still 26,196 active and, with such a small population, they are no doubt feeling the grief that over the 218 lives lost so far to the deadly virus
So far there have been 196 million confirmed cases worldwide and over 4.19 million deaths recorded.