Seymour David; Hipkins ChrisDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Well thank you Mr Speaker. On behalf of ACT I'd like to reiterate what other members have said expressing our concern and condolences to our Anzac cousins across the Ditch and the way that they have had their way of life affected and even some loss of life due to this Delta variant. Prime Minister Morrison has described the Delta variant as a game-changer and it certainly seems to have changed many of the parameters of COVID-19.It seems that while we are enormously fortunate not to be in the place of the Australian states—or at least many of those states—right now I think people will want to know what sort of a rethink our Government has had in light of the Delta strain and particularly in relation to this ministerial statement what sort of defences the New Zealand Government is putting in place to ensure that we don't despite suspending the travel bubble end up with COVID and the Delta strain of it entering New Zealand. So I wonder if I could just first ask the Minister what sort of advice he received around the risk taken by saying that the situation is grave enough to suspend the travel bubble but also having a week's amnesty where people could return from Australia—or at least some parts of Australia—where Delta was circulating or nearby to their location with no apparent safeguards once they arrived in New Zealand.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): We did put in place additional safeguards for people returning from Australia. One of the most obvious was that everybody coming back from Australia needed to have a negative COVID-19 test before they were able to come into the country. Some of those states in Australia when we did that amnesty week had no active cases in their community. So the risk was low but the risk was growing. Subsequent events over the last week have demonstrated that that's the case. We have also put for Victoria where there was a slightly elevated risk at that point a requirement that people need to self-isolate on return and get another negative test once they've come back to New Zealand. So I think that there were appropriate risk mitigations in place.In terms of the questions around the wider Delta variant and the escalation of risk that comes from the Delta variant that is undoubtedly true. It has changed the situation around COVID-19. We saw examples last year and early this year where contact tracing was able to contain COVID-19 both here and in Australia in a way that the Delta variant draws into question whether those systems would be able to operate as effectively in the future if we saw a case making its way into the New Zealand community. So we would certainly draw on the lessons from that and any future response that we may need to have here in New Zealand.Our managed isolation facilities are among the tightest in the world. That is not to say that there's no risk; there is absolutely risk there and we do everything we can to drive that out and to stay vigilant. The work we have been doing around air ventilation systems around staff training around personal protective equipment around vigorous monitoring around vaccination of the border workforce—around all of those things—are all contributing to continuing to tighten up that system but there is no such thing as no risk.DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): In light of our managed isolation system—and the Minister said it's one of the tightest although the Delta variant is changing the parameters of the virus—I wonder what advice he's had about the effects of the Delta variant on the effectiveness of vaccination with respect to infection and transmission. Besides its effect on the usefulness of vaccination the incubation time—in other words the amount of time it takes for the Delta variant to incubate and become testable—what sort of advice has the Minister had on whether or not the current managed isolation and quarantine settings of having a wall of vaccination and testing three times in two weeks is adequate given the changed parameters he's just talked about?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): In terms of the overall effectiveness of vaccines it's still early days yet but what we're seeing around the world is that vaccination is still very effective against the Delta variant although it could be slightly less effective than it is against some of the earlier variants of the virus. It still significantly reduces the chances of someone getting COVID-19 spreading COVID-19 and COVID-19 having a serious health effect on them but it is as I said early days yet.In terms of our managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities one of the things we will look at is where we do the testing. So we know Delta does seem to move faster does seem to spread faster. We already at the beginning of the year as a result of some of the new variants we were seeing introduced a day zero test for everyone coming into the country as a result of the fact that we know new variants are more transmissible and are moving faster. So we have already put that day zero test in. That hasn't applied to people coming from Australia until recently. We're looking at that. There's another question about—day three is still a good time—whether the gap between day three and day 12 is too big a gap whether there needs to be something in the middle. We will look at that and that will include looking at whether other testing technologies could be used to increase the frequency of testing for people in MIQ. Haven't made decisions on those yet but they're certainly being actively looked at.DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): How would the Delta variant change the Government's response to an outbreak in light of his comments that he's just made about the possible inadequacy of contact tracing with a faster spreading variant? Does the Government have any new policy changes in respect to how it would respond to an outbreak in light of the Delta variant?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): It would very much depend on the facts of each individual case. In every individual case that we've seen regarding COVID-19 since we started this process 18 months ago every case has been different and every case has required a slightly different response. So I think some of the things that we would look to are: the nature of the contact—was the source of the person contracting the virus known? Those are all things that we've always looked at previously but the answer to some of those questions might dictate a slightly different response.DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Just finally Australia for the first year that we had MIQ I recall provided about 40 percent of all isolating passengers inbound. The Australian travel bubble did one thing: it freed up an enormous amount of MIQ space and for a short time it seemed that the demand had been met and that people were relatively content with their ability to get into the country. Over the last two months MPs have had an avalanche of complaints from people who say that MIQ is often booked as far away as November. And as the Minister just said once upon a time supply and demand would match; now they're clearly not hence the problems with bots and so on. With the Australian travel bubble suspended there is only going to be much greater demand for MIQ spots on top of the fact that it is already booked up for months. Many people find themselves in desperate situations humanitarian and economic because they can't get through the border. Does the Government have any plans that it can tell us about to expand the level of MIQ space available?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I don't have anything to announce on that today but I can give the member reassurance that yes we are looking at overall MIQ capacity; what the options might be to increase that. Physical buildings are not the only part of that particular jigsaw puzzle; in fact they are probably the easier part of the puzzle to solve. The workforce continues to be a challenge there. We've spread our Defence Force quite thinly across MIQ to help to run that and we're reaching the outer limits of what we can do there in terms of calling on the Defence Force to help given their other commitments that they also have to fulfil. We have stretched our health workforce quite thinly as well both in terms of the work we are doing around testing MIQ vaccination and asking them to continue to do everything the health system would normally do whilst still doing those other things; recognising that the COVID-19 response around the rest of the world has often resulted in their health system stopping doing a whole lot of things that our health system continues to do every day. I think we are all grateful that out health system continues to perform but we have to recognise that it is very very stretched and that those are the sorts of things that are constraints we have to work through; they are not all insurmountable constraints but they do take time to work through when we want to expand our MIQ capacity.DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Does the Minister have a date he can tell the House when he will announce changes to MIQ policy for all those people stuck at the border who are waiting for that kind of information?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I think there are two things to that. One is around capacity. I don't have a particular date in mind about that. It will take as long as it takes but I can give the member—and in fact all those people who are waiting—assurance that we are working as quickly as we can to get those answers. The other is around the process to allocate those rooms that we do currently have available and we are working very actively to look at whether there are ways to introduce more fairness into that system. The system works very fairly as I said where there is more supply than demand. It does create inequities in the position that we are in at the moment.