Genter Julie Anne; Hipkins ChrisHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Chair. I just had some follow-up questions on purpose-built managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities. Is the Government looking at that as something that would increase the total supply of MIQ rooms and therefore allow more New Zealanders to come home at least in the first instance or would it be a replacement for hotels?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Perhaps if I could take the opportunity—and I should have done this earlier—to just take a moment to thank the people who work in our MIQ facilities because I do want to take this opportunity to explain that it isn't just about a physical facility. To isolate people safely for a period of two weeks requires a heck of a lot more than just a room with a good system of air ventilation. We spend a lot of time talking about air ventilation—one of the only countries that has this particular debate at the degree of intensity that we have. I think we're fortunate to be in the position where we are debating those things.But actually it is the human factor that is by far the most important part of the success or failure of our system of isolation. I do want to acknowledge that of the—I think we'd be over 170000 now. I don't have the exact figure to the day but we were about 168000 last week of people who have come through our managed isolation facilities and back into New Zealand. We are talking about less than a dozen or so incidents potentially of transmission. Now in the global context no other country—very few other countries if any—would be able to claim that level of success for their managed isolation and their border restrictions and it is the people that make that possible. But no system there is without risk. No matter how good you make the facilities again there is no system there without risk because at some point you still have to get food to people. You still have to provide for their ability to get some fresh air. With any of those activities there's a degree of risk. You have to attend to their health needs. You have to be able to test them. All of those things involve a bit of human interaction and with that comes a degree of risk. So I just want to really stress it isn't just about the physical facilities.In terms of the physical facilities when you think about what a purpose-built MIQ facility might look like and how it might differ to a hotel it ultimately comes down to air ventilation. Actually the facilities don't look that different to hotels. You still need to have a room. You still need to have a bed. You still need to have a bathroom. You still need to have food delivered to you. So all of those things which hotels do—and they've done it very very well—would still be required in a dedicated facility. Probably the bit that we would be able to design more carefully and more purpose-built is that air ventilation system. Most of the facilities that we've got we've been able to get our air ventilation system to a point where it is pretty good in terms of the needs for managed isolation recognising that the hotels were not built for this purpose. To build a dedicated facility of the scale that we're talking about for isolation it would be a long process and not something that's going to bring on stream a whole lot of additional capacity quickly. Therefore if we want to bring on additional capacity more quickly than that it is going to come down to looking at other hotel facilities and other workforces that we can tap into.So again it's not just a case of saying That hotel facility looks good." The question then is: do you have the workforce to do the testing? Do we have the workforce to do the security? Do we have the workforce to do the other specialist functions that go with MIQ—the pastoral care for example. Our MIQ team have developed a really good model of pastoral care that has served the people coming through the facilities very very well. So yes we are absolutely looking at how we can extract a bit more capacity out of the system."