The New Zealand government has announced on September 17, 2021, that it will extend its travel bubble ban with Australia until November 2021 at least.
The Trans-Tasman bubble, which was originally planned to resume by the end of September 2021, has been extended for a further 8 weeks. The New Zealand government will then review its decision in mid-late November 2021 in order to give more time for its vaccination rates to climb higher.
New Zealand currently only has 11 positive cases of COVID-19, all of them in Auckland. Meanwhile in Australia, New South Wales announced 1,284 new cases and 12 deaths, and Victoria announced 510 new cases.
“When QFT was established with Australia, both our countries had very few recent cases of COVID-19 community transmission, and a very similar elimination strategy. This has changed significantly leading to our decision to suspend QFT for a further eight weeks,” NZ Covid-19 response minister Chris Hipkins said in a press statement on NZ’s official government site.
“Protecting New Zealand from any possible further spread of the Delta variant of COVID-19 is our absolute priority. We have made great progress to contain our current outbreak and are working hard to ease restrictions next week. Reopening quarantine-free travel with Australia at this point could put those gains at risk.”
For those with emergency situations, one red flight is scheduled to depart Australia for New Zealand on September 26, 2021. Passengers on this flight must apply and be eligible for an emergency allocation.