In a major COVID-19 update, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that the country borders will not open to tourists until every citizen is vaccinated. The country has garnered worldwide praises for controlling and keeping a check on the pandemic situation so well right from the early stages.
While the whole world was struggling with Coronavirus outbreaks, New Zealand immediately stopped all international travels and implemented stringent rules to cap the virus spread. As per reports, since the onset of the pandemic, the nation of five million has recorded 2295 cases and 25 deaths only.
But, instead of celebrating the success and opening the country for tourists, New Zealand PM said that she won’t reopen the borders until its citizens are vaccinated and protected.
The PM said, “New Zealand will only truly feel like it returns to normal when there is a certain level of normality in the rest of the world too. But given the risks in the world around us and the uncertainty of the global rollout of the vaccine, we can expect our borders to be impacted for much of this year.”
She explained herself for taking such a strict decision by giving scientific reasoning and said that to restart travel in the country, they need one of two things, “… either the confidence that being vaccinated means you don’t pass COVID-19 on to others — and we don’t know that yet — or we need enough of our population to be vaccinated and protected that people can safely re-enter New Zealand.” But, as of now, both the possibilities will take time.
The government had promised that free vaccinations will be provided to its residents along with the residents of neighboring countries including Tokelau, Cook Islands, Niue, Samoa, Tonga, and Tuvalu. But right now, the country is still waiting for their vaccine approval, so the process is going to take some time.
Earlier, New Zealand had established a one-way travel bubble with Australia, but it was shut down on Monday for 72 hours after the first case of new COVID-19 strain was reported in New Zealand.
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