New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said travel between Australia and New Zealand might be “on the backburner” for several months, according to a report from ABC News.
Arden said Australia’s coronavirus community transmission levels were too high to consider opening up New Zealand, added the report.
“One of the things we said as part of our criteria was that anywhere we have quarantine-free travel, they have to be free of community transmission for a period of time, 28 days,” she said, according to the ABC News report.
“That is going to take a long time for Australia to get back to that place.”
The report also mentioned that Ardern said it was “very hard to predict” when travel between the two countries might restart, but said it might be “on the backburner for … several months”.
Australia is currently grappling with a second wave of Covid-19. The country’s state of Victoria declared a state of disaster on Sunday and has imposed a nightly curfew on Melbourne in an effort to contain the resurgence of the virus.
New Zealand has gone 96 days without a locally transmitted case of Covid-19, according to the country’s Ministry of Health.
Last week, Air New Zealand put a hold on further bookings to Australia until August 28, after the Australian government limited the number of flights arriving in the country.
