There are better ways to run MIQ

The government’s be kind mantra doesn’t extend to MIQ:

A Napier father caring for his sick 11-year-old in the US says they’ll swim home if that’s what it takes after being declined an emergency MIQ spot.

It comes after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern received an open letter on behalf of almost 2000 Kiwis abroad calling for immediate and urgent changes to the MIQ system.

Maddox Preston was just nine when he was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour. He’s had four brain surgeries and two rounds of chemo in New Zealand but the tumour keeps coming back.

“The prognosis wasn’t good but hey we gotta keep fighting,” his father Chad Preston says.

That fight led Maddox, now 11, and his family to fly to the US city of Houston six weeks ago so he could undergo potentially lifesaving treatment.

Now they’re stuck there, unable to get a spot in managed isolation.

Their application for an emergency MIQ spot was bolstered by letters from doctors in the US and from Starship Hospital, yet it’s been declined.

“We’re not asking for any special treatment or anything like that, we just want to come home and continue to care for our son,” Chad says. . . 

If a child who had to go overseas for cancer treatment doesn’t qualify for an emergency spot in MIQ who does? And why when so many New Zealanders can’t come home are their exemptions approved?

. . . Although the names of those famous MIQ-wranglers the Wiggles, America’s Cup crews, actors, nannies and tribute bands have been well publicised, more recent events and programmes approved by ministers are less well-known.

On top of these pressures, public health advice on separating returnees is expected to lead to a 15% fall in supply.

Documents obtained by RNZ show overseas participants in a mountain bike festival are the latest group to be approved for places in managed isolation.

The Government has approved 70

foreign athletes and staff who will attend November’s Crankworx event in Rotorua for MIQ places.

Also on the approved list were 60 international competitors, staff and media taking part in the Winter Games starting in Queenstown and Wanaka at the end of this month. . . 

Day by day the list of New Zealanders who can’t come home and problems trying to get MIQ spots grows. The system is not fit for purpose  and there are better ways to manage applications including this one from Heather Roy:

New Zealand’s MIQ (Managed Isolation and Quarantine) is a shambles and I have a solution to propose.  Hand MIQ over to the airlines.

Imagine this. You are a New Zealand citizen or resident and want to come home. Perhaps because there is an emergency situation in your family or a loved one has died. Maybe it’s just time to return while the pandemic continues to ravage the world. You go to the airline website and book a flight AND an MIQ place at the same time. It’s a package deal. (BOOM, done! as my kids would say). A utopian dream or could this really be possible?

The reality is far from the scenario just described. For those who haven’t had to walk the MIQ booking tightrope it goes something like this. Travellers need to decide whether to book a flight first or book an MIQ slot. Neither is of any use without the other so there’s a chicken and egg dilemma. MIQ places are much harder to get than flights so most travellers book several places on the MIQ website with the intention of cancelling those not needed later. Then the search for a flight begins – travellers need to find one that arrives on the same date matching an MIQ booking arrival. This can take hours online. MBIE isn’t sympathetic to the matching problem, merely commenting new dates are released frequently. True, but irrelevant as new booking dates are often snapped up in seconds. Those not lucky enough to be online at the right moment miss out. It’s not uncommon for the website to crash and travellers can be penalised for booking too many MIQ places. One woman told me she had been banned from the website for a period because she had booked too many slots while she searched for a flight, unable to find any that landed on the same day as places she had reserved. In short it is a very bad video game of ‘Speed Dating Roulette’.

Daily there are heart-wrenching stories of kiwis unable to book MIQ places despite heroic efforts to do so. Many New Zealanders abroad feel they have been abandoned with an MIQ booking system that is broken, is fully booked for months ahead and when limited spaces do become available these are taken in seconds. A very frustrated group of kiwis living overseas launched The Grounded Kiwis Petition  a few days ago.  . . 

Last week we got a peek into how the future of travel might be which could include short MIQ stays and self-isolation for people who are fully vaccinated and have been to countries where the risk of contracting Covid-19 is low.

Those on the green list won’t be numerous which will still leave many thousands of New Zealanders trying to get home.

The swift and deadly spread of the Delta variant has put paid to ideas that life will get back to normal quickly. Medical researchers are now suggesting it could be several years before we’re able to travel freely again.

That requires more MIQ facilities, preferably at lest some purpose-built, and a much better and fairer booking system for MIQ.

It also requires those who hold sway over emergency applications to extend kindness to people like Maddox and his family.