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Dr. Siouxsie Wiles is urging anyone traveling from Auckland to bring their level 3 restrictions with them, despite the government saying there is no legal requirement to do so.
Thousands of people who have flown south from Auckland are being told to take the level 3 restrictions with them and to be on the lookout for any symptoms of Covid-19.
Flights from Auckland to the other major cities have continued normally since the Auckland region went to Covid-19 Alert Level 3 and the rest of New Zealand went to Alert Level 2 on Sunday.
Some 108 flights departed from Auckland Airport on Monday, including 15 to Christchurch, 14 to Wellington and seven to Queenstown.
Among those who traveled for the weekend were about 2,000 Auckland residents who were in Christchurch for the city’s largest open-air music festival, Electric Avenue.
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A Jetstar spokesperson said the airline had a “marginal” increase in demand for Auckland flights on Sunday.
Since then, it had canceled six return flights on Monday and Tuesday, but the affected passengers would be transferred to other flights within several days.
An Air New Zealand spokesman said a similar number of passengers were flying this week, but declined to say how many.
Microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles said that anyone traveling from Auckland needed to bring their Level 3 restrictions with them because they could be unknowingly incubating the virus.
A spokesperson for the government’s Covid-19 Response Group said personal travel in and out of Level 3 restricted areas was strictly limited.
However, there was no legal requirement for anyone traveling to a level 2 region to comply with the level 3 restrictions.
The spokesperson encouraged travelers to be particularly vigilant and get tested if they started showing signs of poor health or symptoms of Covid.
Anyone who needs to cross the alert level limit for work or personal reasons, and has not been allowed to do so, should apply for an exemption from the Ministry of Health.
Wiles urged people not to travel unnecessarily and emphasized the importance of wearing a mask.
Airlines also needed to keep food and beverage services on hold, so passengers kept their masks on all the time, he said.
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Professor Michael Baker says it is important to ask on what basis people should be allowed to leave Auckland.
There was an increased risk of spreading the virus in places where people were in close proximity to each other.
“If you are someone who has been to Auckland and has symptoms, then you should not ignore it for a day.”
Professor and epidemiologist Michael Baker said it was important to ask why people should be allowed to fly from Auckland to the South Island, what the rules were for exemptions and how they were applied.
“If you add hundreds or thousands of people flying in a day, that starts to increase the risk of spreading the virus.”
Joseph Johnson / Stuff
Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel says it’s concerning that 2,000 Aucklanders were in Christchurch for the Electric Avenue festival on Saturday, but “it is what it is.”
Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel said it was a bit “worrying” to think about the number of people who had traveled from Auckland to Christchurch for the Electric Avenue festival over the weekend.
“I think people should follow the rules and … that’s the lesson we’ve learned from what happened in Auckland.”
She hoped that people would continue to use the Covid tracking app or log in manually, stay very cautious, get tested and stay home if they had any concerns about how they were feeling.
Christchurch has not had a case of Covid since early November, when two staff members at Christchurch’s Sudima Managed Isolation Facility tested positive following a cluster of 31 cases by Russian fishing crews.
Additional reporting by Steven Walton
