Pre-departure changes in Auckland to begin next flight April 4 and passengers reminded to be truthful when responding to government questions

Cabinet last week changed the pre-departure testing requirements for passengers in New Zealand travelling to Niue. 

The standard 72-hour pre-departure PCR testing will now change to 48-hours for passengers starting on the 4th of April next month. This means that the PCR test will need to be done on the Sunday before the Tuesday fortnightly flight from Auckland.

In a statement, Minister of Health Sauni Tongatule said that Niue will continue to make changes to government protocols as conditions dictate to mitigate the risk of importing more Covid 19 cases to Niue.

“Although all the eligible passengers must be fully vaccinated to travel to Niue, we still require them to complete pre-departure testing. All these measures that we put in place are to mitigate the risk of importing COVID-19 into Niue, despite the community transmission of COVID-19 in New Zealand and elsewhere,” says Tongatule.

The government also introduced a new test to the protocol with the saliva-based PCR tests as part of pre-departure testing procedures.

There is also a call for passengers, to be honest when responding to questions from the government.

According to senior government officials, they discovered that some of the passengers in the last flights were not truthful in their responses until further investigations.

The Director-General of Health Gaylene Tasmania and the Head of Public Health Grizelda Mokoia were on Radio Sunshine yesterday to update on the situation with the four active cases of Covid-19 at MIQ and the move to Alert Code Yellow.

Grizelda Mokoia said that responding truthfully to these questions will help minimise the risk of more cases of the virus entering the island on each flight.

The government is asking that the message be relayed to families and friends in New Zealand so that they are aware of these changes. 

Gaylene Tasmania says that it is important for the locals to realise that the New Zealand government is also changing and relaxing most of their restrictions next month.

This means that some of the precautionary measures like those at the Auckland airport will change, so passengers will have to do their part to help minimise the risk of bringing the virus with them.