WELLINGTON – New Zealand plans to open a virus-free “travel bubble” with the tiny Pacific realm of Cook Islands before year’s end, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said yesterday, while expressing caution about a similar arrangement with Australia.
Ardern said the quarantine-free travel corridor was possible because New Zealand and the Cooks – an archipelago of under 10,000 people – had successfully contained the coronavirus.
New Zealand has recorded only 22 coronavirus deaths in a population of five million, and marked 100 days since its last case of community transmission on Sunday, while the Cooks declared itself virus-free in mid-April.
The economic benefits of the travel bubble are expected to be felt mostly in the Cooks, a popular tourist destination where Ardern estimated 60 percent of pre-virus visitors were from New Zealand. (AFP)
