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- New Zealand will resume quarantine-free travel with some parts of Australia next week
- The travel bubble was suspended on Saturday following the outbreak of the Delta strain of COVID-19 in Sydney and other east-coast cities
- Those travelling will need to provide a negative COVID-19 test before departure and must not have visited the blocked states and territories in recent days
- Travel to and from Western Australia, New South Wales, Queensland and the Northern Territory will be reviewed on Tuesday next week
The New Zealand government said it will resume quarantine-free travel with some parts of Australia next week after COVID-19 restrictions in Wellington were lifted earlier today.
The travel bubble was suspended on Saturday following the outbreak of the Delta strain of COVID-19 in Sydney and other east-coast cities.
New Zealand’s COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said quarantine-free travel will resume with South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria states and the ACT from Monday, although authorities would continue to review the situation until then.
“The cabinet agreed that partially lifting the pause was the appropriate course of action,” Hipkins said.
“The health advice is that the spread of COVID-19 in these parts of Australia has been contained at this point.”
Those travelling will need to provide a negative COVID-19 test before departure and must not have visited the blocked states and territories in recent days.
Travel to and from Western Australia, New South Wales, Queensland and the Northern Territory will be reviewed on Tuesday next week, Hipkins added, allowing the necessary test results to be returned and a further assessment of the current outbreaks.
New Zealand is among only a handful of countries to have contained the spread of COVID-19 within its borders, with its last community case reported in February.
The country has so far had 2385 confirmed cases and 26 deaths linked to the virus.
