International Travel and Pandemic: New Zealand’s COVID-19 Control Strategies

International travel has changed since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020. Technically, it began in 2019 hence the name COVID-19, but they kept it hush hush till they couldn’t anymore. Don’t ask me who “they” are?

Anyway, since 19 March 2020 New Zealand closed it’s borders to non-citizens and non-residents. And on 21 March same year, a four-tier alert level system was introduced by the government as COVID-19 control strategy. The four-tier alert level system placed the population and economy into lockdown. The lockdown was to begin from 12:21pm on 25 March 2020 up till 12:21pm on Wednesday 13 May 2020. Since then New Zealand has entered and come out of several lockdowns in hopes to curb the unprecedented and ever-changing COVID-19 situation.

Read about Life in Lockdown: My 2021 experience.

On 3 December 2020, the country left behind alert level system and moved into the COVID-19 Protection Framework commonly known as the traffic light system. The traffic light system simplified what to do and how to manage life with Omicron thus reducing impact of future outbreaks. The system involves three settings – green, orange and red. RNZ News has explained these in simpler terms, find out details here. You can also get more information from the official COVID response website here.

For the longest time, Auckland had been on red level since the onset of this system. The rest of the country joined when the omnicron situation went out of control. As at the time of publishing this post, All of New Zealand is at Red. The traffic light settings will be reviewed on April 14, 2022.

In the mean time, the government has rolled out plans to ease international travel restrictions and reopen the border to non-citizens and non-residents once again. By the end of this year, international visitors should be able to visit New Zealand easily. Hopefully, nothing unprecedented happens before then.

Find out who can enter New Zealand and when they can enter New Zealand, and the health and vaccination requirement they need to meet on the official New Zealand COVID response website, United against COVID-19.