Originally Posted by
C441
I wonder how many of the rolling 30+ thousand Australian stranded overseas considered a return via NZ?
Relatively few: only those who are NZ Citizens or Permanent Residents, nobody else has access to the NZ Managed Isolation & Quarantine [MIQ] / Hotel Quarantine system.
However there have been some. When we had an outbreak in an MIQ hotel, it was discovered that a number - a dozen or so IIRC - of people who had been isolated in that hotel couldn't be contacted for follow-up because they had already skipped to Australia. To somewhat mitigate this risk, Australia introduced a new rule that you couldn't access quarantine-free travel from NZ to Australia unless you had been in NZ for fourteen days after leaving MIQ.