The Government has unveiled a new risked-based approach that will be used as New Zealand gradually opens its borders from the first quarter of 2022.
Travellers will be categorised either Low, Medium or High-Risk depending on where they come from and their vaccination status.
Low-Risk travellers must be vaccinated and travelling from low-risk countries. They won’t need to isolate on arrival.
Medium-Risk travellers must be vaccinated and travelling from medium-risk countries. They will need to meet modified isolation rules, including a shorter stay in managed isolation and/or self-isolation.
High-Risk travellers won’t necessarily be vaccinated and will be travelling from high-risk countries. They will need to do 14 days in managed isolation.
The classification of countries will change as their risk-profiles change.
Business people given opportunity to test Medium-Risk pathway this year
The Medium-Risk pathway will be tested out between October and December.
Businesses and organisations that need to send staff overseas will be invited to partake in this pilot.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said participants will be limited/the opportunity won't be given to thousands of people.
On their return they will need to be able to self-isolate alone, not with their families or flatmates.
Ardern said meeting a stringent health criterion would be fundamental to businesses/organisations getting approval.
The idea behind testing the Medium-Risk pathway with businesses/organisations is this provides accountability, which is another layer of protection.
Businesses/organisations will have to provide plans around how they're managing risks and will be weary of following protocols to avoid having their brands connected to breaches of rules or COVID-19 outbreaks.
The Government hasn’t provided further details on the pilot or the pathways.
Tweaks to vaccine rollout
Separately, it announced that from today, people need to wait six weeks between vaccine doses.
The idea is to give more people access to the vaccine more quickly in the face of the more transmissible Delta variant.
Border workers, those with underlying health conditions, and those who wish to be fully vaccinated sooner, can get their second dose after three weeks.
To coincide with this change, people who aren’t yet vaccinated will be able to get a dose a bit sooner than previously planned.
Over-50s can get their first dose from August 13, over-40s from August 18, over-30s from August 25 and everyone else from September 1.
As at Wednesday, 865,000 people had received both doses of the vaccine. A further 1.47 million people had received their first dose.
48,611 vaccine doses were administered on Wednesday, the biggest daily total to date.
Elimination strategy to stay
New Zealand will maintain its “elimination” strategy, which includes a commitment to stamping out the virus when cases crop up.
The approach aligns with advice an advisory group of health experts, led by David Skegg, gave the Government.
Skegg said it's paramount everyone is given an opportunity to get vaccinated before border controls are loosened. See this story for more on this advice.
See a video of Skegg, Ardern, Ashley Bloomfield and other experts talking about the plan here.
Below is a summary of the approach. Click on the magnifying glass to zoom in:
165 Comments
While I'm realistic about my chances of a reasonable response, I'm genuinely curious. I had a fairly brief look at previous vaccination incidents and found all had very quickly obvious side-effects, but presumably anyone who is setting themselves up against Medical Orthodoxy has done a little more research...right?
Here is a couple that I have seen, don't know how valid they are. 1) Concern about the mRNA and viral vector vaccines setting up spike protein factories in the body. Long term auto immune effects of spike protein on the body unknown. 2) mRNA lipid nanoparticle not staying in the muscle and concentrating in the ovaries of women.
Here's another: Around 1978 there was a dengue fever outbreak in Cuba, followed by different dengue variant outbreak 19 years later. The disease was worse the second time around because the body remembers the original immunity rather than making anew. It's known as "original antigenic sin". Nobody knows how this will apply to the covid19 vaccines. Some epidemiologists have some ideas, but who knows whether it's a great idea to be vaccinating everyone including the very young.
Well we have a common motivation then dcnbwz. I don’t know why you keep asking me what my motivation is? If you must know I don’t care whether my opinions are aligned with the establishment narrative, or whether they're liked or not. I just say what I think is true, and I try to back it up with logic reason and scientific literature. Of course, I could be wrong. If you think I'm wrong please try to convince me with logic and reason. It seems to me that there are so many lies floating around right now. In relation to that here's a quote from Jordon Peterson that I read a while ago that struck a chord with me.
"First a little lie; then several little lies to prop it up. After that, distorted thinking to avoid the shame that those lies produce, then a few more lies to cover up the consequences of the distorted thinking. Then, most terribly, the transformation of those now necessary lies through automatised, specialised, structural, neurologically instantiated unconscious belief and action."
That's the rabbit hole that we all have to avoid going down...
Concern about the mRNA and viral vector vaccines setting up spike protein factories in the body
The mRNA lasts in the body for about 2-3 days and then is recycled, like all other mRNA the body itself produces.
Long term auto immune effects of spike protein on the body unknown.
Yip. Lots of things in life are unknown, for example Long COVID. However we have no reason to suspect there is a problem with the antibodies your body has created in response to the spike protein - it would have created those same antibodies (and many many others) if it had been infected by COVID.
2) mRNA lipid nanoparticle not staying in the muscle and concentrating in the ovaries of women.
Which get recycled after 2-3 days.
it would have created those same antibodies (and many many others) if it had been infected by COVID That's one of the big problems with the vaccine. All the missing epitopes. Some covid19 proteins present to the cell surface before spike and before the full virus is synthesised. That gives the immune system a head start. DOI 10.1007/s12026-014-8534-z and this https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2550-z
Mr Doctor: what is the mechanism whereby we obtain antibacterial resistant organisms?
A non lethal treatment with a narrow selection pressure. Explain how that differs to the vaccines and how vaccinating people won't create selection pressures for novel variants? Then explain how natural immunity is worse than vaccine immunity. Then explain why a young healthy person should be vaccinated.
Rotashield-removed to intussusception, dengue fever vaccine due to antibody dependent enhancement....Plenty of small molecule drugs went thru phase III and got killed with post-marketing surveillance e.g. Avandia, Vioxx, a thrombin inhibitor from AZ, a statin from BMS....Assessing lots of people for a short period of time won't necessarily identify side effects that take time to develop e.g. the liver tox with the aforementioned statin. Disclaimer: I am pro-vaccine and currently vaccinated against COVID-19. Like Kahawai I am comfortable with the science of adjuvants, epitopes, cellular vs humoral immunity, GMTs and antigenic drift vs shift.
Opening economies are being ravaged by covid. China is no different. Our health system simply cannot cope with such loads. Businesses that require mass importation of human's to make their model work need to evolve, or fail.
So keep the door shut and keep exporting food to the world. Enjoy our beautiful isolation.
Your comment is complete nonsense. The UK is having 29,000 people testing positive daily, with 104 people dying daily within 28 days of testing positive and 712 patients admitted to hospital daily.
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/
In the US there are ICUs being overwhelmed in some states. Certainly not normal. A lot of working class people are worrying about losing their jobs, and the covid stimulus payments are running out in the next month. There's a big push to allow evictions for not paying rent and at some point the evictions will be carried out on a large scale.
One of the very few times I gave xing a thumbs up...
The list of "interesting" countries in regards to covid infection data should also include Iceland and Israel as they are both countries with high vax rates, and as a comparison to the poster child of high vax rates (Israel), look at Palestine which has a very low vax rate. Which of these two countries is going through a huge increase in new cases? (hint, it isn't the highly vaxxed country...).
Obvious if you have uncommon sense, like those at the border need to vaccinated, or any number of the most obvious things that need to be done that for what ever reasons cannot be done.
I feel a little pity for Labour, assuming any level of self-reflection it must be so frustrating to not actually achieve anything (and in fact some-what comically make the very things you campaigned to make better (housing) materially worse and in fact as bad as it has ever been in recorded history.)
Re: "people will just fly back through a low risk country to avoid quarantine."
But why do you think the countries that NZ will deem low risk are low risk? Because those countries themselves will have a 'trusted' process to people arriving from high risk countries.
Look at how hard to was for arrivals from India a few months ago to get anywhere> Ended up with rich IPL cricketers doing self funded 2 weeks in the Maldives. Because even hubs like UAE were restricting them.
This is just the same approach formalised. It worked that time.
The 'security theatre' as you describe it is actually having COVID be a reality in our lives, so that the vaccine hesitant and anti-vaxxers get with the programme and do what is necessary for living in civilised society and get themselves vaccinated.
Vaccine rates in the US are picking up now that COVID is resurging amongst only the unvaxxed.
A large percentage of the currently hospitalized with COVID in the US are fully vaccinated, at least as is shown in the few states that report data with sufficient discretization so that one can gain a better understanding. Annoyingly, the CDC is rather remiss in providing appropriate data. There are a few states that provide good data in near real-time (a week or less lag).
Yes, the vax may reduce your symptoms. With the Delta variant, you risk of getting covid isn't changed much if you get vaxxed. Sadly, the immunity provided from the vax is initially strongly negative until about two weeks after the 2nd jab. The data from Israel shows that the immunity conferred decreases to nearly zero six months after being vaxxed. Hence the run-up of using a 3rd shot booster. Annoyingly, the side effects from this booster is even worse than the initial jabs.
https://www.medsafe.govt.nz/COVID-19/safety-report-21.asp
this has the numbers of people who went & reported side effects
I think this article and the peer reviewed references cited within say all there is to say about ivermectin https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/indias-ivermectin-blackout
zerohedge.com - far right - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Hedge
"Vaccine rates in the US are picking up now that COVID is resurging amongst only the unvaxxed"
Yes - about those figures ...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/09/america-is-flying…
" Ironically, on 1 May, the CDC announced it would stop monitoring post-vaccination breakthrough infections unless they led to hospitalizations or deaths. This decision can be seen as exceptionally ill-advised and has led to a country flying blind in its attempt to confront its fourth wave of infections – one that has rapidly led to well over 100,000 new cases per day and more than 60,000 hospitalizations, both higher than the US first and second pandemic waves. It is unfathomable that we do not know how many of these are occurring in people who were vaccinated."
Civilised societies dont force unproven medical procedures on their inhabitents. Their are many reasons people will want to wait for further information on these jabs. Pfizer has no information on how they react with other medicines. The experimental work has not been done. Have you read their info on the medsafe website? I doubt it. I have taken the time to read all this OFFICIAL stuff on OFFICIAL websites. Perhaps if pro jabbers did too they may rethink. Try the CDC and NIH just to start with.
It should and finally is obvious to all, that the world will need to learn too live with Covid and it's variants as they come along. Like other Covid type viruses, it is out there now in the world and as humans we going have to live with it. We can minimise the collateral damage but won't stop all of it. (If we were living in the 1800's where you could only travel by boat around the world you could minimise more of the risk, but we don't)
An interesting and pretty reasoned approach by the Government, and it does make sense, overall.
However the devil is in the detail, and this Government has been repeatedly proven quite good at planning, declarations of principles, and announcements - but not so good when it comes to implementing such plans and policies. We shall see.
But the first signs are quite good and this plan is better than what I was expecting from this Government.
Yes – overall not bad – and as you mention, better than I expected – kudos.
Mentally it might be a bit tough for some to see the walls and drawbridge coming down on fortress NZ but we just have to get on with it.
And for those that willingly not vaccinated – choices/consequences.
We could probably play this game all day.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/91648
“Even with new variants, it's unlikely antibody-dependent enhancement will be an issue.
So far, there have been no reports of ADE with COVID-19 vaccines.”
I don’t plan on worrying my life away – we have to get on with it.
so far ... gee thats reassuring
The studies they did with SArs coronavirus didnt work out so well for those animals ...
Hey - put whatever you like in your body - as long as the risks are made clear to people... ah yeah - about that
"the National Institute of Health provided funding for a 2020 academic paper that reaches the following conclusion:
The specific and significant COVID-19 risk of ADE should have been and should be prominently and independently disclosed to research subjects currently in vaccine trials, as well as those being recruited for trials and future patients after vaccine approval, in order to meet the medical ethics standards for informed consent."
"At present, there are no known clinical findings, immunological assays or biomarkers that can differentiate any severe viral infection from immune-enhanced disease, whether by measuring antibodies, T cells or intrinsic host responses” (Arvin et al. 2020; Liu et al.,2019)
It means if you have ADE, you will never know. All I think of is "breakthrough cases"
Interesting read. So what protects us from ADE is the close genetic similarity of current viral S-protein with the 2020 stabilized version upon which the vaccine is based. Isn’t it pretty bad news then that the serial passage of the virus through millions of vaccinated people is encouraging single point mutations in the S-protein all the time? and that’s probably where P681R came from. Also I don’t quite understand how they’re convinced ADE isnt a problem after such a short amount of time. It can take years or decades to show up.
Pat, I find it hard to comprehend the gaslighting from media and health authorities. Yet I read the work done on ADE and its there. In black and white. On their own websites. It may take a few years, but these scientists warned other scientists the experiments showed using any type of vaccine against corona viruses resulted in longterm problems with breakthrough illnesses that would be serious in nature. The warning was as follows. Dont do human trials its too dangerous. Dont do human trials....
This will be delayed as the vaccination progress will continue to be the current snails pace. Can't see the vaccination rate being high enough until end of next year.
How about we build a specialist hospital set up for contagious viruses while we are waiting, to deal with the many severe cases we will get.
No matter what the vax rate is, there will be no herd immunity (add: via using leaky non-sterilizing vaccines). We are seeing this in the countries that went early and hard with vax.
While data shows vaccination is reducing the rate of serious illness due to COVID-19 in Iceland, the country’s Chief Epidemiologist Þórólfur Guðnason says it has not led to the herd immunity that experts hoped for. In the past two to three weeks, the Delta variant has outstripped all others in Iceland and it has become clear that vaccinated people can easily contract it as well as spread it to others, Þórólfur stated in a briefing this morning.
They don't have 8 million doses to do because children under 16 currently aren't eligible, and there will be a bunch of people who don't get them.
Also the target was to reach 70,000 per day during September - October. I don't have any reason to think they can't reach that number, given what they're doing now. Number of administering places is going to increase from here, and they're talking about doing worksite vaccinations also.
My understanding is that being vaccinated does not stop you from catching the virus, but just makes you less susceptible to its effects.
So does being vaccinated, if you still catch it, stop you from infecting other people.
If so then there is a gaping flaw in the logic of what could happen.
The vaccines are good at preventing hospitalisations but not very good at preventing the symptoms of a "mild case". I've got several double vaccinated friends in the United Kingdom who have contracted it recently and still had an awful time for a couple of weeks. You can still transmit the virus when vaccinated.
You are correct, you get a milder form but are still infectious but for a shorter period. UK’s spike of infections was Covid been given free reign and felling those not vaccinated. That’s consequences and the rights of the individual vs rights of a community clashing.
Thanks for the replies confirming that so two possible outcomes are:
1) Vaccinated travellers coming back with Covid they unknowingly caught while away, and not having to isolate, can now spread it amongst the greater community.
2) And these same people may have caught another variant which the previous vaccination may or may not give them less susceptibility to, but again they will readily spread it.
I can't see how you can get around the quarantining.
And it would seem that having the population fully vaccinated does not help as Iceland has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world and yet has had a delta strain outbreak. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/covid-19-coronavirus-iceland-deals-wit…
The experiments done on animals showed the first time they were hit with the virus the animals had mild symptoms.
The next time they were hit with a virus things took a more serious turn. The antibodies you make, make friends with the virus and march it on into your cells. Time will tell what happens. And we simply havn't had enough time go by. I shall stay in the control group for another 2.5 years.
I gather you've got many years of experience in immunology and other areas of bioscience, and that's why you are embarking on this "2.5 years more" of being "in the control group", because your personal academic experience and area of study suggests this is an appropriate course of action?
Varsity was fun. I learnt a lot of biology. But not enough about this current subject, so I have been trawling the american public health sites, you know the CDC, NIH. All you need to know is in papers on these sites. Its plainly written in conclusions. Easy to understand.
All premised on NZ reaching adequate vaccination levels and there in lies the frailty of this headline grabbing announcement. 80% is commonly touted for herd requirement. I’d suggest the most likely future is that in 12 months we will get to 65% or so with all kiwis being offered the vaccine. Then what. Seymour’s approach is aggressive but the idea of a minority holding back border opening should not be entertained and in that regard I believe that he has a point. I’d like Ardern to commit to some evidence based herd numbers and announce a plan based around reaching it, and also what she’ll do if we don’t reach herd threshold. What we got was vague and full of promise with no commitment around targets and consequence.
Herd immunity? You are six months behind the data. There isn't herd immunity:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/herd-immu…
Look at those conditions for confidence at the bottom of the image.
I wonder what the vaccine effectiveness threshold is before this get indefinitely delayed. A more sensitive test at the border is the only thing that possibly make this work.
I also note that refer to vaccine in the singular. Its going to take a bigger carrot than this for me to get into on the endless Pfizer booster regime. I'll wait until I want to leave the country as we will be in Level 4 before almost all of us are in any risk otherwise.
"The Government will pilot a scheme for vaccinated travellers to travel overseas and self-isolate at home from October through December."
"The Government attempted to use self-isolation for returning travellers early in the pandemic but it was soon found to be unworkable, with little enforcement of rules and mixing between people within households."
So why do something when you know you can't trust people to self isolate properly?
Especially in the Delta context where vaccinated people who think/hope they are OK can carry and spread.
Especially knowing we do not have anywhere near the required hospital capacity, and have nowhere near the vaccination rate required, and will likely run in to a brick wall of vaccine hesitant at 75%.
Bizarre and just asking for lockdowns.
Shutting down Aus bubble was a good call - at that time .
There is a big difference between letting Covid in later ( when hopefully we have reached high vaccination rates .. ) and right now .
Let it in we will end up doing - there is really no other option - but the timing is important.
I do feel that the Govt is still in denial now - we will have to live with Covid sooner than they think and should face it .
It is already ramped up / ramping up. Velocity suggests they will meet target by end of the year. They could of course stuff it up, maybe an outbreak and lockdown slows it.
It depends on how you measure it. 16% is probably % of total population fully vaccinated. But NZ is not trying to vaccinate 100%. about 15 to 20% of these are children, another 10% will refuse.
We are aiming only for population aged over 16.
Economist measure vaccination rate globally for people aged 12 and over. NZ current numbers are:
35.4% 1st dose
20.8% 2nd dose
Credit where credit is due. The current vaccination rates of 40k plus per day is impressive. If we can keep it up we will be mostly vaccinated by the end of the year. Spreading the time gap for the second shot while at the same time opening up the age cohorts earlier will just make the next few months a lot faster. We could be cranking 50k plus jabs a day and have the basic protection we need in place before the Delta sniper finally makes his shot.
Under pressure has announced but lot of details missing.
They are not very clear in their approach.
Should have mentioned as of now which countries in low, medium and high risk. Also what happens to people comming from medium to high risk countries, if they spend 14 days in low risk countries before comming to NZ.
Assuming all those who wants to be vaccinated will be by November / December what is stopping them with announcing dates, it indicates are not sure even of their vaccination policy.
We all know that will have to start in 2022 and also will categorize countries like UK but.....
in the end there will be no choice -- Covid will be rampant in NZ probably this year but certainly next and as the rest of the world found our and NSW is experiencing -- nothing will prevent its spread once established
At that point the anit vaccers - or not really sure will have a different set of considerations to make--- the rest of us will be stuck with an overwhelmed health system unable to cope with other illnesses such as cancer , hip replacements and other minor surgery -
IN the meantime - we still wont be able to recruit the trained health professionals we badly need and our best young talent will be fully vaccinated and heading out the doors even faster than normal to open societies - with better wages and no restrictions --
What would be smarter would be to invest more in our health infrastructure - more ICU beds - special quarantined wings or better still full facilities, a shit load of ventilators and producing our own supplies of the vaccine and needles! 680million on a cycle bridge would buy a lot of needles vaccines and ventilators!
It's not so grim, latest data from the CDC shows that the breakthrough infection rate among the vaccinated is only 0.01% (inc. Indian Delta variant.) Even if you where infected the probability of being hospitalised is about 25 fold lower with the vaccine.
In short, by the end of this year, it's extremely unlikely there would be any lockdown for vaccinated people. It just wouldn't actually achieve anything in terms of saving lives.
The potential tragedy of this is those of us who tried to be responsible and got vaccinated who may find themselves in an unexpected situation and in need of an ICU bed for a reason totally unrelated to Covid but who are unable to get one because those who are not vaccinated are occupying them with a nasty dose of Covid.
I just tried to link the Adverse Events register nz, cant do it. The list is sad. It goes on and on. My questions as I looked at this list. An adverse event was registered for this person. What happened then, did they improve? Did they get worse? If they get worse is the AE then added to? Its on the medsafe website if anyone wants to check it out.
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