Reconnecting New Zealand — the next steps

Fully vaccinated New Zealanders will find it easier to come home from January 2022, with foreign nationals to follow from April onwards, as the Government removes the requirement for managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) for most travellers.

Closing our border was one of the first steps we took to keep our country safe from COVID-19 and it’ll be the last thing we open up, following our transition into the traffic light system system and lifting of the Auckland boundary.

3-step plan for entering NZ without going into MIQ

For details around when travellers can enter New Zealand without going into MIQ:   

1. From 11:59pm on 16 January 2022, opening to fully vaccinated New Zealand citizens and those residence-class visa holders and other travellers eligible under our current settings from Australia (provided they have been in Australia or New Zealand for the past 14 days).
2. From 11:59pm on Sunday 13 February 2022, opening to fully vaccinated New Zealand citizens and those residence-class visa holders and other travellers eligible under our current border settings, from all but very high risk countries.
3. From 30 April 2022 onwards, opening to fully vaccinated foreign nationals (possibly staged by visa category), .

Other eligible travellers

Eligible travellers include people who can enter New Zealand under current restricted immigration settings, for example:

• New Zealand citizens and residence class visa holders and their partners and/or dependent children
• the small number of temporary visa holders with a border exception — for example, critical health workers and other critical workers, people who have humanitarian reasons to travel to New Zealand, and people belonging to a class exception agreed to by Cabinet.

Further detailed information is available on the Immigration NZ website.

Border entry requirements | immigration.govt.nz (external link)

Requirements for those not going into MIQ

We have a clear, simple and safe plan, including a mandatory period of self-isolation. The border will open in 3 steps, and all travellers who do not have to go into MIQ will still require:

• a negative pre-departure test
• proof of being fully vaccinated
• a passenger declaration about travel history
• a day 0/1 test on arrival
• a requirement to self-isolate for 7 days, and
• a final negative test before entering the community.

We are making this announcement today to give families, businesses, visitors and airline and airport companies certainty and time to prepare. It’s very encouraging that as a country we are now in a position to move towards greater normality.

We always said we’d open in a controlled way, and this started with halving the time spent in MIQ to 7 days. Retaining a 7-day isolate at home period for fully vaccinated travellers is an important phase in the reconnecting strategy to provide continued safety assurance. These settings will continue to be reviewed against the risk posed by travellers entering New Zealand.

Further details on how self-isolation will be implemented will be made available in December 2021, and include guidance on how people can travel from their arrival airport to their location of self-isolation and requirements for the places where they can self-isolate.

We're following expert advice

Some people and businesses want us to start to open up before Christmas, and that’s understandable, but others want us to be more cautious. We acknowledge it’s been tough but the end of heavily restricted travel is now in sight.

There continues to be a global pandemic with cases surging in Europe and other parts of the world, so we do need to be very careful when reopening the border.

In the end, we’ve done what we’ve always done, and that is to follow expert advice — which continues to show us the border is our biggest risk for new cases. For example, our current outbreak which now has over 7,000 cases associated with it, stems from a single traveller traveling from Australia to New Zealand.

A phased approach to reconnecting with the world is the safest approach to ensure risk is carefully managed. This reduces any potential impacts on vulnerable communities and the New Zealand health system.

Our dates for opening of borders logically follows the bedding in of the traffic light system, the lifting of the Auckland border, time for regions to get their vaccination rates higher still and for booster shots to be rolled out.

This does not mean the end of MIQ as a system, which was always intended to be temporary at this scale and has served us incredibly well – with more than 190,000 people brought home since our borders closed in March 2020.

There will continue to be role for it in the foreseeable future.

More information

• More detail will be provided in December 2021 for people holding existing Managed Isolation Allocation System (MIAS) vouchers for MIQ dates after the steps commence and on self-isolation for groups.
• For Step 1, agencies will work with airlines on implementing checks of passengers’ compliance with travel requirements, including vaccination status and pre-departure testing, ahead of a rollout of a digital Traveller Health Declaration System towards the end of March 2022.
• The availability of both New Zealand’s and Australia’s international COVID-19 vaccination certificates will support compliance checks. Immigration New Zealand airline liaison officers will be deployed on the ground as support in Australia.
• The 3 steps constitute a medium-risk pathway. Those who do not meet the requirements for medium-risk pathway, but are still permitted to enter New Zealand under current border settings, will continue to enter MIQ upon arrival under the new regime of 7 days in MIQ, followed by 3 days of home isolation.
• This will include those who do not meet vaccination requirements (including unvaccinated New Zealand citizens) and those from very high risk countries.
• The very high risk classification for Indonesia, Fiji, India, Pakistan and Brazil is to be removed in early December 2021 and travellers from these countries will be able to enter New Zealand on the same basis as travellers from most other countries.
• This allows New Zealand citizens and those residence-class visa holders and other travellers eligible under our current border settings to travel directly into New Zealand.
• Papua New Guinea will continue to be classified as very high risk. Only New Zealand citizens and dependants can travel directly to New Zealand.
• All travellers from Papua New Guinea must spend 14 days in a non-very-high-risk country before coming to New Zealand. Exemptions are provided for humanitarian reasons.
• The COVID-19 situation in these countries will continue to be monitored as part of a regular surveillance and assessment process.