Wellington, Europe Brief News – The New Zealand government said it will not require travellers from China to produce a negative COVID-19 test on arrival, bucking a trend that has seen a number of countries implement testing measures as COVID cases surge in China.
New Zealand’s COVID-19 minister, Ayesha Verrall, said in a statement on Wednesday that a public health risk assessment had concluded visitors from China would not contribute significantly to the number of cases in the country.
“There is minimal public health risk to New Zealand,” the minister said.
“Officials have done a public health risk assessment including working through scenarios of potential case numbers among travellers from China. This confirmed these visitors won’t contribute significantly to our COVID case numbers meaning entry restrictions aren’t required or justified,” the minister said.
Officials will be asking some travellers from China to do voluntary tests to gather more information, which Verrall said reflected New Zealand’s concern alongside that of the World Health Organization (WHO) about China’s lack of information sharing.
New Zealand is also planning to trial testing waste-water on international flights to see if this can replace targeted and voluntary testing of individuals.
A number of countries including Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States are requiring that travellers from China produce a negative COVID test over concerns about the scale of the country’s outbreak and scepticism over Beijing’s health statistics.
