ENTERING RECOVERY PHASE
Foreign travel ends the nation’s 24-day streak of being free from COVID-19, but New Zealand remains at Alert Level 1.
MEASURES
- In response to quarantine breaches and other failures that resulted in three new COVID-19 cases, New Zealand’s defence force will now oversee the country’s quarantine facilities and strengthen border requirements. The nation remains at Alert Level 1, with its border still closed to everyone except for returning citizens; certain exceptions have been made for business and compassionate reasons.
- According to Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, the pandemic has exposed issues around building an economy on consumption driven by immigration – suggesting for the nation to “tighten its liberal immigration policies and concentrate on improving the skills of its own workforce”.
- In 2017, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s Labour-led coalition had pledged to reduce net annual migration, and had little success until the nation closed its borders earlier this year due to the coronavirus outbreak.