New Zealand fully reopens borders 28 months after pandemic began
New Zealand has fully lifted its Covid border restrictions for the first time since March 2020.
The country of five million sealed itself off from the outside world at the start of the pandemic after its government adopted a ‘zero cases’ strategy.
The policy effectively succeeded for the first year-and-a-half and was kept in place even after a largely successful vaccine rollout.
But it cracked after the Omicron variant fuelled tens of thousands of cases for the first time at the start of 2022.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern abandoned the strategy amid pressure to revive the country’s comatose tourism industry and warnings of a second post-pandemic recession.
The Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) warned that the border restrictions posed a major risk to the Kiwi economy and said her government was fuelling a debt crisis by trying to spend its way out of the slump.
Kiwi citizens stranded overseas were only allowed to return earlier this year provided they were fully vaccinated, starting with those in Australia from February and the rest of the world in March.
In May the country began welcoming tourists from around 50 countries which joined a visa waiver scheme.
As of 11:59pm on Sunday, anyone with a tourist or student visa will now be allowed to enter the country.
Ms Ardern said on Monday: ‘We, alongside the rest of the world, continue to manage a very live global pandemic, while keeping our people safe
‘But keeping people safe extends to incomes and wellbeing too.’
Cruise ships and foreign recreational yachts are also now allowed to dock for the first time since the start of the pandemic.
Local businesses have warned that tourism and hospitality groups are already struggling to find staff to cope with the return of visitors.
A major hotel and tour company says it has had to cancel recently booked tours because it was unable to hire bus drivers and guides.
Immigration officials are also struggling to clear a massive backlog of visa applications and have received less than half of the number of requests compared to pre-pandemic levels.
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