Every 100,000 travellers passing through quarantine in Australia and New Zealand has come with an average six "failures" - and experts warn that risk may increase. Further, about 55 percent of the failures could have been prevented with the full vaccination of frontline border workers, assuming the vaccine was more than 70 percent effective. "And although New Zealand has had a higher failure rate, Australia has experienced more lockdowns," he said. "But it will remain essential to keep regular testing of border workers because, although vaccination reduces the risk, there is still a risk workers could spread the virus into the wider community which is still largely unvaccinated." "We also introduced a new very high-risk country designation to further manage risk, and from [now], all workers at MIQ and those working for public sector border agencies will need to be vaccinated.

Source: Otago Daily Times May 01, 2021 03:33 UTC