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Comment by simonhfrost | Hacker News Reader

I'm a NZ citizen living overseas and it's currently impossible to fly home over the new year because of limited mandatory quarantine locations.

The booking system is flawed in a way that scalpers have already dominated supply and are selling slots for thousands of dollars, reinforcing that NZ is becoming increasingly unaffordable for typical people.

More information including petition to overhaul the booking system can be found here: https://www.groundedkiwis.com/

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I'm also an NZer overseas.

I believe there was plenty of time to fly home before the MIQ was put in place. (I was told about MIQ when I went to vote). However, yeah, I've never seen open spots on the MIQ.

That's just terrible.

In Canada we are allowed to quarantine in our own homes, and the government checks up on you and fines you for leaving within 14 days afaik.

I hope you get home to your family soon.

In Canada, when entering the country via airplane, there's a mandatory regulated 3-day stay at a hotel as part of the 14-day quarantine. This costs 1000-2000$ (for three nights!), And is absolutely an impediment for normal ppl to return to home. The measure was meant to discourage tourism, but ppl working abroad returning, immigrants and students were all treated the same.

(The measure is in effect late Feb to early Aug 2021)

And that is also why we have every foreign origin covid variant floating around in Canada. Quarantine by honor system clearly hasn't worked.

I wish we had been stricter with international travel so that we could have had less restrictions at home.

I was dumbfounded by the "restrictions" myself.

You can't drive over the border, but you can fly? Makes 0 sense.

yes, and that's (part of) why Canada has endemic Covid-19 and NZ does not.

So you can think of no other explanation why a remote island country without any land borders, and with it's closest (still further than US is from Europe, but closest) neighbour not having a spreading infection, might be safer against spreading infections than a country with a 9000 barely-patrolled border with a neighbour that had it's Corona response (first) directed by a real estate billionaire ?

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