COVID-19: Thousands of vacant managed isolation facilities each week since July



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The whole family had visas and all his belongings, including the children’s beds and toys, had been shipped in a container, as they were to be reunited with him two months later.

“My daughter and I are very close and she is taking it very badly.

“And on top of that, I said you can really say zero bonding time with my son.

“I mean, now he crawls up, stands up and starts saying a few words; I’ve wasted all that time with my wife watching our son develop together.

“We’ve given up everything and now it’s taking such an emotional toll on us that you have to start making decisions. You can’t keep your family apart forever.

Room at the inn?

In a statement, an MIQ spokesperson said that a capacity of approximately 1,100 people is currently assigned to specific functions such as quarantine, resident personnel, maritime (commercial), maritime (small craft), deportees and aircrew.

“Additional capacity for contingency planning is also required in the unlikely event that a managed isolation facility requires evacuation or a natural disaster occurs.”

“Ensuring the safety of all New Zealanders during this global pandemic is critical and it is necessary to be able to safely transfer these returnees to new facilities with additional capacity.”

Armstrong said he accepted that MIQ facilities should have contingencies, but the figures showed that border restrictions could, and can, be eased more quickly than they had.

“Even if you give it a big latitude and it says that maybe we have to have 1500 voids, that’s an acceptable margin, that means every fortnight there were probably 600 or 700 people who could have come to help mitigate this terrible, terrible crisis humanitarian.

“Each bed counts, each bed represents the life of someone who is currently being destroyed.”

RNZ

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