Sydneysiders may be able to fly to Auckland before they can fly to Perth or even the Gold Coast – that’s the word from Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
Morrison told the National Press Club in Canberra yesterday: “I was speaking with Prime Minister Ardern this morning and we’ll continue to have our discussions about the trans-Tasman safe travel zone, and it may well be that Sydneysiders can fly to Auckland before they can fly to Perth, or even the Gold Coast, for that matter. But I can assure you I won’t be holding back on expanding the size of our markets for our goods and our services to wait for some other borders to clear.”
Morrison is pressing Labor premiers in Queensland and Western Australia to open their state borders to travel.
NSW is encouraging interstate visitors to visit on holiday from 1 June 2020. Some other states, with a lower incidence of the coronavirus, are taking a much more cautious approach.
New Zealand may have eliminated community transmission of Covid-19 entirely. The country’s Director-General of Health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, told TVNZ’s Breakfast program yesterday that the lockdown is being eased carefully “so the country wouldn’t go backwards”.
“We’ve got to remember, New Zealand has done phenomenally well,” Bloomfield said.
“If we were the UK today, we would have had 3500 deaths, we would have had 250 new cases just yesterday and we would still be in lockdown.”
Australia has also done very well, but low-level community transmission continues in Australia, particularly in NSW and Victoria, centring on schools, nursing homes, meat packing plants and some other unknown places. Australia yesterday reported nine new cases, three in Victoria, two in New South Wales and four in Western Australia.
In late news yesterday, six crewmembers from the Middle Eastern livestock carrier Al Kuwait, docked in Fremantle, have tested positive for Covid-19.
Auckland waterfront
MEANWHILE, airports and airlines are looking to the future. Maximum testing is likely when air travel resumes, and if a vaccine is developed, countries may require proof of inoculation/vaccination before admitting visitors. That is nothing new. Travellers used to carry medical history cards and, in some cases, still do.
There are new electronic ways of recording such data. A company called Covi-Pass says it offers “a secure Digital Health Passport which displays your Covid-19 test history and immunoresponse and other relevant health information”.
Travellers may once again need to supply vaccination information to pass through borders
The company’s website says: “COVI-PASS™ is able to display past and current Covid-19 test results to confirm your immunoresponse. This ensures confident return to work and life.”
For more on that, see: https://www.covipass.com/
Much will depend on a vaccine being developed.
Written by Peter Needham
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