New Zealand Shuts Down Travel Bubble With Western Australia After Outbreak

A top epidemiologist says New Zealand's decision to pause quarantine-free travel between it and flights from Western Australia is correct.

Michael Baker said Saturday there was a "very low risk" of Western Australia's outbreak spreading to New Zealand. Two people in Australia spent several days in the community while infectious - leading to a three-day lockdown in Perth.

The state's COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins announced a temporary suspension of travel "set out in our trans-Tasman bubble protocols."

The University of Otago's Dr. Michael Baker said there was a "very low" chance of an outbreak in New Zealand should a person from Australia arrive in the country while infected.

"A lot of planning has gone into the green zone with Australian quarantine-free travel...(it) does have a range of scenarios built into it," he told 1 NEWS.

"A wide range of options from very small outbreaks or border failures where the source is well defined, right up to a poorly controlled outbreak. So, really, the system is designed for these kinds of scenarios."

Earlier this month, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced a traffic light system designed to manage the trans-Tasman travel bubble.

Ardern said people traveling between the two countries will do so "under the guidance of 'flyer beware.' People will need to plan for the possibility of having travel disrupted if there is an outbreak."

"Just as we have our alert level settings for managing cases in New Zealand, we will also now have a framework for managing New Zealanders in the event of an outbreak in Australia, which involves three possible scenarios: continue, pause, suspend."

The bubble, which followed months of negotiations between the largely coronavirus-free neighbors, was hailed as a milestone in restarting an international travel industry badly affected by the pandemic, Reuters reported Saturday.

It meant that passengers from Australia and New Zealand - both of which have largely contained COVID-19 - could fly across the Tasman Sea without undergoing mandatory quarantine on arrival.

The leaders of both nations had hailed the bubble, which also would have provided a much-needed boost to New Zealand's beleaguered tourism industry, and urged residents to take advantage of it, the Reuters report said.

Before COVID-19 brought New Zealand's tourism industry to its knees, it was the country's biggest export industry, with Australians accounting for about 40% of the international visitors.

New Zealand said April 20 an Auckland airport worker had tested positive for COVID-19, but Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said at the time it would not affect the bubble, which was then 24 hours old only. Ardern said the cleaner worked on planes arriving from "red zone" countries deemed high risk - not Australia.