Australia-New Zealand travel bubble begins after 400 days

Pretty cool - over 400 flights this week alone will take place. Lots of families re-uniting - lots of grandparents seeing their grandchildren for the first time! This is of course only possible because both countries adopted the same elimination policy, which for the most part, has worked extremely well.

Well done NZ/Aus.

Good news. Wish the Japanese Government would keep an eye on this event. Not that they would learn anything from it. However, they might find it interesting at the very least.

There was a lot of criticism by some on here about pursuing an elimination strategy, and that it was impossible and would not work - where are those folks now?. NZ/Aus/Taiwan economies are fully open bar international travel, and they only ever had one significant wave - the first one. Their medical systems were never overrun, and because they have no community spread, they don't have to rush vaccinations either.

Australian news today mentioned possibility of future travel bubbles for Australia and amongst some other Asian countries Japan was mentioned. I mean how uninformed is the media. 4000 cases daily with amongst the lowest testing in the world the chance of Australia having a travel bubble with Japan are well less than Zero.

With the virus still active all over the world and mutating, remains to be seen if the Aussie and NZ ‘success” so far is sustainable.

if the Aussie and NZ ‘success” so far is sustainable.

well, its worked for well over a year....

Australia, New Zealand, sparsely populated island nations in a remote part of the world. They had a few built in advantages but yeah, good for them.

stickman1760 - Australia, New Zealand, sparsely populated island nations in a remote part of the world. They had a few built in advantages but yeah, good for them

The major cities Melbourne and Sydney of 5 and 6 million people respectively were the hubs of the virus. The success has nothing to do with being ‘sparsely populated’. The success came from strict lockdown measures, border closures, business and school closures and vigilance by the Australian people.

This travel bubble is still on a knife edge and can be cancelled at the first sign of infections.

Just in time for ANZAC day. That spirit still lives on in both nations. Well done ANZAC's

This would have made more sense if the virus didn't got widespread around most of the world.

The moment they open their borders they will have outbreaks, even if they can "lower it" with vaccination in place.

And because of the political theater that has happened around SARS-CoV-2, if there is any increase in cases, even if most are asymptomatic or mild thanks to the vaccination program, they will close down again the borders, and/or put extreme measures for people trying to enter or leave the country, so it is a success as long as you don't think about that.

Hopefully this is a first step back towards normality, if indeed it still exists...but imho this illustrates that lockdowns , business & border closures supported by government subsidies do work in controlling covid outbreaks.

seems like NZ and Australia are the 1st to get their freedoms back , reward for going hard early on in the pandemic,

meanwhile other nations are hitting their 4th waves, because inept governments and MY RIGHTS!!

My cousins family had to pay NZ$7000 for quarantine. A lot for taking a four hour flight.

Who would go to New Zealand now? They treated visitors very badly with their lockdowns. Now they expect Australians to just forget about that and go skiing and spend loads of money in their locked-down-social-distancing pubs. Pass.

Why would a country go into full lockdown because of one or two cases? Keep in mind the covid transmissions in question occured DURING a previous lockdown.

Why would anyone in their right mind visit a country that keeps alternating between lockdown and not.

Visited NZ many years ago with my family. N and S Islands. Aukland, Rotorura. Queenstown. Skiing. Some of the most beautiful places on Earth. But, as a tourist, if you're living day to day with the threat of a lockdown and sensitive mask and social distancing rules (actually, yes, your gov. website states under Level 1, these rules are still in effect)... Takes the joy out of visiting. NZ is too long a flight to put up with that nonsense.

Why would a country go into full lockdown because of one or two cases?

To eliminate community transmission and to get full freedoms back much sooner with no further risk.

Why would countries rather have multiple waves of covid and the constant ongoing disruptions, overflowing health systems and danger rather than to go hard and eliminate the threat allowing your country to go back to normal? That makes no sense to me.

Hillclimber

It's not the CBD, it's the population in the metro. While Sydney city is large by western standards, Tokyo is on another level in terms of density. There's no comparison.

Sure. But population numbers are completely irrelevant. Population density isn't even relevant. Check out this chart, it shows that there is no correlation between covid deaths and population density:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-19-deaths-vs-population-density