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Jacinda Ardern says there will be protocols in place to deal with any Covid outbreaks on either side of the bubble.
The trans-Tasman bubble is officially open, bringing an unprecedented period of national solitude to an end. From today, New Zealanders can travel to and from Australia without the need for isolation. The thing is, people can now fly here, and avoid our first line of defence – the managed isolation and quarantine facilities (MIQ). This may well have some New Zealanders worried. While the world has been ravaged by Covid-19, New Zealand has, for the most part, continued as normal. We’ve avoided lengthy lockdowns. Shops, bars and restaurants have mostly stayed open. Kids have stayed in school.
Bookie wonderland: How book club became the new nightclub
6 minutes to read
Trending, Lifestyle and Entertainment reporter, NZ Herald Books have always had the unique ability to whisk us away to other worlds - whether we re sitting in a quiet library, on holiday surrounded by beachgoers, curled up on the couch at home, or waiting for a bus.
But this especially hit home over the past year when we were all stuck inside for days on end - our books provided the perfect form of escapism.
Now as life gets somewhat back to normal, they re providing a sense of community in the form of the humble book club.
Covid-19 coronavirus: Three key questions about the Aussie bubble and risk nzherald.co.nz - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nzherald.co.nz Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Finding a recent case in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) or elsewhere on the border that matched this cluster lineage would be strong evidence for the border incursion scenario. We haven’t got any such direct evidence – but this doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
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Extensive testing and contact tracing determined the earliest case found to date was an Americold coolstore worker who first showed symptoms on July 31, and the initial spread of the cluster centred around this coolstore, which imports frozen goods.
Thus, the third hypothesis is that the virus may have been imported on packaging material, where it could have survived in low temperature conditions, and then gone on to infect a worker at the coolstore.