Richard Meade, Auckland University of Technology Faced with a COVID-19 pandemic of unknown severity and duration, governments around the world are looking for effective and sustainable ways to maintain economic confidence and employment. Even New Zealand, where lockdowns have been few and short-lived, is confronting the reality of repeated lockdowns, especially since the United Kingdom variant has now been detected …

David Welch, University of Auckland; Jemma Geoghegan, University of Otago; Joep de Ligt, ESR, and Nigel French, Massey University New variants of SARS-CoV-2 have now evaded New Zealand’s border protections twice to spread into the community. In the most recent outbreak, which placed Auckland into an alert level 3 lockdown, there are three active community cases of the more infectious …

Michael Plank, University of Canterbury and Shaun Hendy, University of Auckland Relaxing border restrictions for travellers from low COVID-19 risk countries would increase the risk of community cases in New Zealand by around 25%, says an article published today in the New Zealand Medical Journal. This might not sound like a big increase in risk, but it means breaches like …

Germana Nicklin, Massey University Before COVID-19 hit New Zealand’s shores last year, most people’s understanding of defending a border would have come from watching TV reality show Border Patrol. It is easy to understand — on the maps, our country is surrounded by an ocean moat, a natural border. This makes controlling risks arriving from overseas relatively easy as there …

Today’s provisional approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine means New Zealand could start rolling out its COVID-19 immunisation programme as early as next month. In announcing the approval, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said border workers and the people they live with, cleaners and nurses working at quarantine facilities, security and airline staff and hotel workers would be among the first to …

Time to Act By 2020 China will be the world’s largest economy and while it’s already New Zealand’s second largest trading partner, there is scope for far more benefit for New Zealand business. The Auckland Chamber of Commerce, in partnership with NZ INC Ltd, held the inaugural China Business Summit in Auckland on October 3 –  aimed to galvanise businesses …

A Wake-Up Call The second China Business Summit, hosted by the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and NZ Inc Ltd, was held on the 16 October 2013, at the Langham Hotel, Auckland. The focus of the 2013 summit was on how New Zealand could lift its game in the wake of the Fonterra botulism scare, and on the changing China business …

Game Changers The China Business Summit was jointly presented by NZ INC. and Auckland Business Chamber. The Summit was held on Monday November 9, 2015 at The CORDIS Hotel, Auckland. The summit looked at the New Zealand and Chinese Government’s goal to increase bilateral trade with China to $30bn by 2020 and the controversial issue of the Government’s rejection of …

Covid-19 – The Recovery The China Business Summit was jointly presented by NZ INC. and Auckland Business Chamber. The Summit was held on Monday July 20, 2020 at The CORDIS Hotel, Auckland. 2020 was the time for New Zealand business to step up trade with our largest trading partner, China, as we started to put the disruption of the Covid-19 …

Mahmoud Elkhodr, CQUniversity Australia New Zealand’s coronavirus contact-tracing app COVID Tracer was revamped yesterday. It now uses the Bluetooth-based Google/Apple exposure notification (GAEN) framework. This allows Android and Apple (iOS) devices to communicate via a contact-tracing mechanism built into the devices’ operating systems. Meanwhile, Australia continues to use the COVIDSafe app, which also uses Bluetooth, but with a different underlying …