Source: New Zealand Labour Party
From today, fully vaccinated people can travel across the Auckland boundary and reconnect with family and friends once more. It’s the next step in our COVID plan, as we continue to safely ease restrictions and look ahead to a careful reopening of our international borders.
Our decisive response to COVID-19 has saved lives and livelihoods – and it’s only been possible thanks to the hard work of Kiwis across the country. Aucklanders, in particular, have put in the hard yards. They’ve stayed home and stayed apart from loved ones to protect us all.
Auckland’s commitment has allowed us to safely boost our vaccination rate, becoming one of the most highly vaccinated populations globally. These high vaccination rates have mean that we’ve been able to move into the new COVID-19 Protection Framework, and begin to reopen safely.
The new framework will keep New Zealanders safe from Delta, while ensuring we can enjoy summer with fewer disruptions and more certainty. Businesses can safely reopen, events can go ahead, and people can plan ahead with confidence, because our high vaccination rates mean lockdowns are no longer our main line of defence against COVID.
Through vaccine passes and important health behaviours like masking up and scanning in, the traffic light system provides an extra layer of protection for those who can’t be vaccinated, like young children, while giving us greater flexibility to move across the country.
Travel between areas at different traffic light settings, with the exception of Auckland, has been and remains unrestricted – even for areas at Red. From 15 December, fully vaccinated Aucklanders can travel across the regional boundary for any reason, so long as they carry a valid My Vaccine Pass. Unvaccinated travellers will require a negative test before crossing the boundary.
With these safeguards in place, families across the country can gather to celebrate the holidays, music lovers can jam out at summer festivals, and tourism operators can plan their high season with more certainty. From 18 January, the Auckland boundary will lift completely and there’ll be no restrictions on travel in and out of the region.
It hasn’t been easy, but the kindness and commitment of Aucklanders over the past 20 months has protected all of New Zealand, and our economy. We’re entering 2022 better placed than many other countries, with the lowest cases and hospitalisations in the OECD, solid economic growth, and a historically low unemployment rate. The traffic light system allows us to lock in these gains, protecting people and the health system while we get back to something closer to normal.
Our ability to spend summer with the people we love, doing more of the things we enjoy, is a testament to our hard work until now. As we head off for road trips and family reunions, it’s really important that we keep up health behaviours that will slow the spread and assist contact tracing.
We can all do some simple prep to stay safe: make sure to take your mask with you, print off your vaccine pass if your phone battery is dodgy, carry some hand sanitizer along with your sunscreen, keep up the good habit of scanning in, and remind your mates to do the same. This will ensure that together, we can all enjoy a safer summer.
As Aucklanders reconnect with their family and friends across New Zealand, we’re also looking ahead to the next steps in our plan to reconnect New Zealanders with the world.
The first stage in this plan is welcoming back fully vaccinated New Zealand citizens from Australia without requiring a stay in MIQ. This is scheduled to start from 17 January 2022, with a seven-day home isolation period providing continued safety assurance. We’ll then carefully open up further in phases, enabling New Zealand citizens from other countries to return without going through MIQ from February, and then opening up to foreign nationals later in the year.
We’ve seen other countries open up too early and swiftly backtrack. Our phased approach is designed to ensure we can keep New Zealanders safe while reconnecting them to the world and to their loved ones abroad. It will remain responsive as the pandemic evolves – for instance, with the emergence of new variants.
Our strong pandemic response and support for whānau and businesses has protected Kiwis from COVID and kept our economy moving. Our plan going forward ensures greater certainty, flexibility, and opportunities, as we enter a new year and a new way of managing COVID-19.
Read more on the traffic light system here and have your questions answered with this FAQ. Stay in the loop by signing up to our mailing list and following us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
