Anyone living in NZ, what's it like there? Why havent UK banned foreign nationals like NZ have l?

[unhappyclap]

Morning all,

Been reading a bit about New Zealand and how they are handling the COVID19 situation. One thing that stands out is the banning of foreign nationals. To my knowledge here in the UK people are still able to travel in and out depending on the airlines availability. On arrival there is no state led quarantine system. Does any one know why this is?

New Zealand seem to have done this along with other things and they havent had many deaths and generally seem to be managing this pandemic quite well.

Borders closed really early and we went into lockdown with less than 100 cases as the government could see the trajectory.

Lockdown really is lockdown here. No construction. No takeaways. No warehouses operating.

At our peak 3 weeks ago we had 90 cases a day. Today, 9. We've had 11 deaths. All of them over 80/90 years old with significant health issues. Most from the same care home.

Vast majority of our 1400 cases came from overseas travel and a handful of 'clusters': a wedding, a conference a boarding school, a care home. Of that 1400 1000 have recovered so we only have 400 or so active cases.

Large scale testing including 300 randoms at an Auckland supermarket. All negative.

Prime minister has been incredible. Clear and decisive while being human, thoughtful and understanding. Daily 1pm press briefings. We find out tomorrow if we stay at Level 4 or go to level 3. This will mean some schools open and more food deliveries much like UK is now. Most Kiwis want to stay at level 4 until there are no new cases for 48 hours.

It helps we have such a small population, low population density and not much reliance on public transport but it's certainly worked.

Presumably mass events like the Cheltenham Festival and Euro football were stopped pretty quickly too.

I honestly do not understand why our borders have not been closed to anyone other than British citizens returning home. It's a total mystery to me, especially as our NHS seems incapable of distinguishing who is eligible to use it from those who are not in normal circumstances, never mind these circumstances. Seems like madness to me.

Thanks @nakedavengerreturns

Sounds like NZ have got this covered. A part of me thinks that in the UK we are still kinda doing this whole hard immunity thing. I just do mor understand why people are still able to come in and out of the country. @GeraniumJohnsonsBlue you're right, it could even be that the UK will have to start treating people who have contracted it outside of the country, dont see why they arent at least nipping this in the bud.

Not as early as they should have @MyHipsDontLieUnfortunately. I was in a large running event on the 13th March same weekend as Cheltenham. We had locked down borders but We still had cruise ships roaming the coasts and we went into lockdown just after the next weekend. We only had 4/5 cases at that point though and it hadn't risen in days so there was a belief the border closure would work..

Could have been better on quarantining arrivals and certainly better at stopping the cruise ships arriving. Ruby princess was here a few weeks before! We weren't perfect but lockdown happened really quickly at very low levels of infection. No fannying about. Quick. Hard. Decisive.