COVID-19: New Zealand PM announces to end quarantine stays; reopen its borders

Wellington [New Zealand], February 3 : In a major announcement, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said that the island nation will end its quarantine requirements for incoming travellers and start reopening its borders, ending tough border rules.
Ardern laid-out a five-stage plan that will allow fully vaccinated New Zealanders to start traveling from Australia.
The plan will commence with fully vaccinated New Zealanders in neighbouring Australia who will be allowed to return home starting from February 27, Al Jazeera reported. This plan will be extended to fully vaccinated New Zealanders elsewhere in the world from March 13.
The New Zealand government envisages borders will be completely open to all by October.
"We are well on our way to reaching that destination," Ardern said in Auckland of the full reopening. "But we are not quite there yet."
The fully vaccinated arrivals will be allowed to self-isolate for 10 days instead of going into government quarantine hotels.
As part of its strategy to eliminate the COVID-19, New Zealand imposed stringent border controls. The country has recorded nearly 17,000 cases and only 53 deaths.
New Zealand last year had initiated a travel bubble with Australia, but that was ended after cases in travellers created a new cluster of COVID-19 cases.
This new plan comes as the more Omicron variant has spread across New Zealand, and the border controls are coming to be seen as an obstacle to efforts to return to normality.
Currently, citizens who have been allowed into the country through a lottery system are required to stay in a state-run quarantine facility for 10 days. However, the lack of spaces has left many people unable to return home.
Even Ardern admitted that the border controls have become a source of inconvenience to many.
"There is no question that for New Zealand, it has been one of the hardest parts of the pandemic. But the reason that it is right up there as one of the toughest things we have experienced is, in part, because large-scale loss of life is not," she said.
"There was life before, and now life with COVID, but that also means there will be life after COVID too, a life where we have adapted, where we have some normality back," Ardern said.
New Zealand has fully vaccinated about 93 per cent of its population over the age of 12.
Ardern said the border controls had given the country the time needed to get people vaccinated and ensure the health system was not overwhelmed with patients.
Under the reopening of the border, some critical foreign workers will also be allowed into the country along with citizens on March 13, with as many as 5,000 international students a month later, Al Jazeera reported.