8. Question No. 8—COVID-19 ResponseTANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) (remote) to the Minister for COVID-19 ResponseQuestion No. 8—COVID-19 Response8. TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) (remote) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: What recent announcements has the Government made on reconnecting New Zealand to the rest of the world?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Yesterday Cabinet agreed to remove the self-isolation requirements for fully vaccinated travellers. Advice from the Strategic COVID-19 Public Health Advisory Group and the Director-General of Health is that it's now an appropriate time to drop the requirement for self-isolation for fully vaccinated travellers after they arrive in New Zealand. We were already in the process of removing the requirement for managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) for that group. Now that we are two years into the pandemic the balance of risk has shifted from our border and into our community. As the pandemic evolves we are evolving in our response as well. Getting tested is now quicker and easier requirements for isolation have been simplified to only those who share a household and care in the community is focused towards those who are most in need of support.Tangi Utikere: When will this change come into effect and what will it mean for New Zealanders overseas?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: From 11.59 p.m. on Wednesday 2 March—so tomorrow night—vaccinated travellers entering New Zealand will no longer need to self-isolate. That means that Kiwis coming home will be able to step off the plane and immediately—once they've been through customs—connect with family and friends and enjoy all that New Zealand has to offer. The Government's also confirmed that we'll be bringing forward step 2 so that New Zealanders from the rest of the world can return from midnight this Friday 4 March. Cabinet is also going to be regularly reviewing the remaining steps over the coming weeks.Tangi Utikere: What requirements will remain on international returnees in order to protect the safety of all New Zealanders?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Travellers will still be required to have a negative pre-departure test before they board a flight to New Zealand and they will need to undertake two rapid antigen tests the first when they arrive in New Zealand and the second five or six days after they have arrived here. If they return a positive result they'll be required to report that result and isolate for the same period as a community case of COVID-19. Returnees will also be asked to follow up any positive rapid antigen tests with a PCR test. That will allow us to run whole genome sequencing for new cases that have been detected amongst people who have come across the border which will help us to determine any new variants that might be coming into the country. That means that we can keep tabs on what's happening at our border and the emergence of any new variants that could be of concern to us.Chris Bishop: What instructions if any have been given to MIQ staff around processing applications for early release from MIQ in the last week and what does he say to Michael Brown who was recently denied early release to visit his father in ICU just yesterday despite testing negative three times in a row over the last five days?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I won't comment on individual cases in MIQ as has long been my practice of doing that. But in terms of the early release from MIQ people will be released from MIQ early as a result of the announcements that we made yesterday.Tangi Utikere: In response to my earlier question to the Minister what impact will these decisions have on the ongoing use of MIQ?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: It will have a significant impact on the use of MIQ and can I begin by picking up where the Prime Minister left off in her earlier comments of thanking all those who have been involved in running our managed isolation and quarantine facilities over the last two years. I want to acknowledge that it has been a difficult job—it's been more difficult at some times than others—and many of those who have been doing that work have paid a significant personal cost for their involvement in MIQ. So I want to extend a very genuine thanks to them for their commitment. Their hard work is one of the reasons New Zealand has enjoyed such long periods of being COVID-free and so we thank them. We will now be starting to scale back our MIQ operations. It will have an impact on those workers and we'll be talking to them about that over the next few weeks. We do expect to retain some MIQ capacity so we'll still need that at the moment for unvaccinated travellers and potentially also to support some of those cases in the community who are unable to isolate safely if they need to. So there will still need to be some MIQ capacity but we'll be working through that over the next week or two.