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Australia halts travel bubble flights again
The Australia-New Zealand one-way travel bubble is once again suspended as Auckland went into lockdown.
It came as three new community cases of the UK variant of Covid-19 were detected in Auckland.
Australia’s Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly, designated all flights from New Zealand as ‘Red Zone’ flights for the next 72 hours.
"As a result of this, all people arriving on such flights originating within this three-day period will need to go into 14 days of supervised hotel quarantine," Australia’s Department of Health said in a website message.
The one-way travel bubble has allowed Kiwis to fly into Australia without quarantining, although quarantine is mandatory in the opposite direction.
The cases were shown to be the UK origin variant B.1.1.7.
"We were absolutely right to make the decision to be extra cautious because we assumed it was going to be one of the more transmissible variants," said NZ Prime Minister Jacinta Ardern in a Facebook post.
NZ health officials have not disclosed the source of the mini-outbreak yet.
Auckland has raised restrictions to Level 3 through Wednesday, which means public venues are closed and gatherings severely restricted.
Air New Zealand has responded to the lockdown by taking ‘extra precautions to keep staff and customers safe.’
"Air New Zealand front line staff and cabin crew will be wearing masks and gloves and customers are required to continue to wear face coverings onboard," it said.
Inflight catering on domestic services has been temporarily suspended.
The airline also cancelled flights to and from Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney.
Written by Ray Montgomery, Asia Editor
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TravelMole Editorial Team
Editor for TravelMole North America and Asia pacific regions. Ray is a highly experienced (15+ years) skilled journalist and editor predominantly in travel, hospitality and lifestyle working with a huge number of major market-leading brands. He has also cover in-depth news, interviews and features in general business, finance, tech and geopolitical issues for a select few major news outlets and publishers.
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