UC Professors contribute to The Conversation with expert insights on how NZ could keep eliminating Covid-19
Stringent border controls and mandatory quarantine give New Zealand a good chance to remain free of #COVID19 for months to come, according to
UC and AoU researchers in the latest article on The Conversation.
Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker
It’s been 76 days since New Zealand’s last reported case of community transmission, and our model shows the risk of an infectious person slipping through the border undetected remains very low. Provided the rules are followed, we would expect this to happen only once over the next 18 months — and even then, this person may not infect anyone else.
New Zealand’s borders remain closed to everyone except residents, citizens and a small number of foreigners with special exemptions.
Currently about 400 people fly into New Zealand each day. Since June 16, 46 people have tested positive for COVID-19 and of those, 27 remain active cases (at the time of writing). All of them are in quarantine facilities.
Each week, about 12 people have arrived carrying the virus. Provided people are well separated at quarantine facilities and have regular symptom checks, our modelling suggests the risk of an infectious person being released into the community is around 0.1% — which means for every 1000 infected people who arrive at the border, one person will be released from quarantine while still infectious.