New Zealand is likely to keep its border closed to the world through most of 2021 amid uncertainty over the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern mentioned.
“We will expect our borders to be impacted for a lot of this yr,” Ardern informed a news conference Tuesday in Wellington.
“We’ll proceed to pursue travel bubbles with Australia and the Pacific, however, the rest of the world simply poses too great a risk to our health and our economy to take a risk at this stage.”
New Zealand’s success in combating the virus has allowed it to lift restrictions and get its economy moving again a lot prior to initially anticipated, but the closed border is decimating its tourism business.
While the government right now announced it expects to offer regulatory approval for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine next week, Ardern mentioned mass immunization won’t start till midyear and he or she was taking a “conservative” approach to let foreigners into the nation again.
“For the journey to restart we want one of two things,” she mentioned. “We either need the confidence that being vaccinated means you don’t pass Covid-19 on to others – and we don’t know that yet – or we want enough of our population to be vaccinated and protected that people can safely re-enter New Zealand. Both potentialities will take some time.”
New Zealand’s goals to start immunizing staff at its managed isolation facilities this quarter, however, Ardern was unable to say when the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine will arrive within the nation.
The vaccine is expected to get to New Zealand around the same time because it will get to Australia, which is slated for mid-to-late February, she mentioned.
“New Zealand may have its house in order so we will be able to obtain, but finally we will likely be within the arms of pharmaceutical firms’ delivery timelines,” Ardern mentioned.
