Cook dinner Islands to Reopen to Tourism With out Vaccine

Foreign Affairs

The Prime Ministers of New Zealand and the Cook Islands have announced plans to reopen the Pacific nation to tourism in New Zealand from May 17.

The tourism operators of the Cook Islands – and almost all of them are in the archipelago – welcome the resumption of quarantine-free inbound travel.

Prime Ministers Mark Brown and Jacinda Ardern announced this afternoon that the borders will open in both directions from Monday, May 17, New Zealand time. That is Sunday in Rarotonga.

Air NZ is promoting economy flights for $ 270 the following day and increasing the frequency of flights to three or four a week from June 7th. Travelers must have spent the last 14 days in New Zealand.

Greg Foran, the airline’s chief executive officer, said it was an important milestone for the two countries. In 2019, of the 446,000 kiwis who made a trip to the Pacific Islands, nearly 110,000 had traveled to Rarotonga. “We are certain that our Cook Island neighbors will welcome kiwis with open arms in an urgent way to stimulate the local economy.”

The newsroom has learned that the two countries’ health directors will have to tick off a final checklist in the next 14 days before New Zealanders can finally check in their snorkels and belongings for their flights to Rarotonga.

New Zealand also provides Covid vaccine to the three empire nations (Cooks, Niue, Tokelau) – but the limited availability of the Pfizer vaccine and the time it takes to train vaccines means the country’s 13,000 residents are unlikely to be until after the reopening of the borders.

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Graeme West, who is responsible for New Zealand marketing for Cook Islands Tourism, said visitor numbers went to zero when the borders closed in March 2020. “Since tourism is the mainstay of our economy, it has created significant financial hardship for many people,” he said. “We are very much looking forward to welcoming Kiwis back to our beautiful islands.”

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No cases of Covid-19 have been reported in the Cook Islands, and West said the country has made the health and wellbeing of its citizens its top priority. This care would now be extended to his visitors.

Contact tracing would play an important role in ensuring travel continued without quarantine, and visitors would be encouraged to use the Cooksafe and Cooksafe + local apps.

It took a long time to reopen. One date after another was considered abandoned. First, the bubble has been delayed by Covid outbreaks in New Zealand, specifically the South Auckland outbreak last August that hit the New Zealand Cook Islands community and told former Cook Islands Prime Minister Dr. Joe Williams, it cost your life.

Then it was further delayed when New Zealand health officials visited and discovered the Pacific nation’s health readiness – contact tracing, regular and nationwide Covid-PCR testing, and more – far from ready for an influx of tourists.

Ardern said the travel bubble would mean families could reconnect, commercial arrangements could resume and Kiwis could take a very welcome winter break and support the Cook Islands tourism sector and its recovery.

She added that a lot of work had gone into making sure the two-way bubble was safe and that the Cook Islands were set up and ready for it. “The health and safety of the people of the Cook Islands has been of paramount importance at all times.

“Vaccination, while not an answer in its own right, will provide an extra layer of protection once it is introduced, and we will continue to push these plans alongside the Cook Islands.”

Mark Brown said the two governments were continuing to work on final details for vaccine use in the Cook Islands and expected to provide more details in the next few weeks. “Today we begin our journey of recovery,” he said. “Today we get back to business.”

This morning Liana Scott, President of the Cook Islands Tourism Industry Council, welcomed the upcoming announcement. Scott manages a large family-owned resort, the Muri Beach Club Hotel, and has not had any international guests since March last year. “We’re taking action, but the income is nowhere near the expense,” she told Newsroom this morning.

Her family has a small side shop selling eggs laid by their chickens from a refrigerator behind the hotel reception. But that is their main income. “The egg farm selling pig feed does more than the hotel,” she said.

Scott said some of the key changes would be that the tourism business would again be able to employ full-time employees, pay employees’ normal tariffs, pay their ever-increasing bills and expenses, and pay their mortgages. In the Cook Islands, locals pay up to 12 percent interest, but with the borders closed last year, nearly 80 percent of the country’s GDP disappeared overnight.

“If we had a wand, our priority would be to open the border on May 15, 2020 and get our small population vaccinated,” said Scott.

It was a shame, she said, that the vaccine could not be introduced in advance as the small and compact populations of the main ports of Rarotonga and Aitutaki would allow the vaccine to be administered to everyone within a few days.

Eve Hayden, executive director of the Cook Islands Chamber of Commerce, admitted the vaccine would be further away. “Given the slow roll-out in New Zealand, I wouldn’t expect the roll-out here to be imminent,” she said. “However, given the vulnerability of the population, New Zealand may decide to mask the urgency of a rollout to reflect the vulnerable in New Zealand.”

The New Zealand government had considered using the NZ Defense Force to distribute and administer the vaccine throughout the lands of the empire, and this should still be an option for remote islands like Tokelau.

For the Cook Islands, the resumption of tourism and more regular commercial flights means the Army and Air Force may not be needed. However, due to the time it takes for vaccines to develop in Rarotonga, Aitutaki and the outer islands of the archipelago, the vaccine is taking longer to be introduced.

Cook’s Prime Minister Mark Brown’s explicit preference for the Pfizer vaccine over the AstraZeneca vaccine New Zealand ships to Fiji means further delays as New Zealand awaits deliveries.

New Zealand’s Director General for Health, Dr. Ashley Bloomfield, has accepted international approvals that allow the Pfizer vaccine to be stored in normal freezing temperatures longer than in extremely low temperatures of -70 ° C. This will make it logistically easier to import into Pacific countries and more remote parts of New Zealand.

Air Rarotonga CEO Ewan Smith said the country’s domestic airline was preparing to distribute the vaccine to the outer islands. “We will have Aitutaki schedules ready as soon as we know,” he told Newsroom today.

“We wait like everyone else for fixed dates and don’t want to outdo each other. We just focus on doing our part well when we get to the introduction of vaccination.

“The number of days it takes to complete a cycle on the outer island depends on how many people you can vaccinate in a day. Except for Aitutaki, all the other islands only have one to 200 adults. So I imagine That logistics should be easy Jet reaches the Northern Group in 2.5 hours. The southern islands are every 45 minutes away. “