Despite the fact that Fiji is reporting hundreds of new Covid-19 cases a day and its hospitals are overflowing as a result of a Delta outbreak, New Zealanders returning from the country do not have to get a pre-departure test.

Travellers from Fiji were exempted from the requirement along with a range of other Pacific Island nations earlier in the year. Australia was also on the list, but has since been taken off due to the Delta outbreak there. Notwithstanding Fiji’s ongoing outbreak,?Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield renewed its exemption on Thursday.

Since July 1, travellers from Fiji have made up just over 10 percent of the 149 cases found at the border. The situation has deteriorated to the degree that the Government has limited the categories of people who can enter New Zealand even further, to just citizens and their partners and children. This was the first change to the official ※very high risk§ list since it was created in April, when travel was restricted from India, Pakistan, Brazil and Papua New Guinea.

Michael Baker, an epidemiologist with the University of Otago, said it was important to have an idea of the risk that travellers from Fiji might pose.

※These sort of decisions should be evaluated with the data that we’re getting. I think a key thing would be to look at the number of infections being found in people arriving from Fiji and look at whether that’s made a significant contribution to the difficulty of managing people in MIQ,§ he said.

There have been 15 cases in travellers from Fiji since the start of July.

Baker said that adding Fiji to the ※very high risk§ list might have sufficiently cut down on incoming cases, but that depended on how many non-citizens were travelling to New Zealand prior to the change.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Health said the decision was made to renew Fiji’s exemption because of the burden?a pre-departure test might place on the country’s health system.

※The current Covid-19 outbreak in Fiji is increasingly challenging and is placing significant pressure on the country’s health system. New Zealand does not want to place further pressure on Fiji’s health response by requiring people in Fiji to seek a pre-departure test prior to travelling to New Zealand,§ the spokesperson said.

Chris Bishop, National’s Covid-19 response spokesperson, said he wasn’t sure that justification held up.

※This doesn’t appear to make a lot of sense to me. Covid-19 is raging in Fiji and the whole point of pre-departure testing is to make sure that people who are Covid-positive don’t get on planes and come to New Zealand,§ he said.

※We need a better explanation than, ＆We don’t want to burden the Fijian health system’.§

Baker said pre-departure testing was a crucial tool in reducing the number of incoming?Covid-19 cases.

※Our argument in the past has been that the best thing New Zealand can do to protect its borders is to reduce to as close to zero as possible the number of infected people arriving here,§ he said.

※As soon as a positive person arrives in New Zealand MIQ, our risk of a local outbreak goes up incrementally.§

The current Delta outbreak in New Zealand started with a returnee from New South Wales who was not required to have a pre-departure test.