Covid-19: How much should New Zealand invest in surveillance testing?
As New Zealand entered a new level 4 lockdown last week, I woke to a message from a friend. Her 16-year-old has Covid. It was entirely predictable after four days at a Cornish music festival.
The booby prize went to the poor Dad on pickup duty. Three teenagers in the back of his car were tossed self-tests; all positive and a four-hour journey home lay ahead. The boys are now confined to their rooms, but vaccinated parents and close contacts only have to go for a PCR test. There’s no legal requirement to isolate. Now, back to reading about the state of calamity in the Coromandel.
Coromandel versus Cornwall
That’s a snapshot of life in the UK versus life in New Zealand. I’ve lived in both versions and I’m currently in the British third wave. Despite this, life is incredibly normal. I’ve been to the French Alps and Greek Islands for five weeks and off to the cinema on Friday night.
Living with Covid in a highly vaccinated country, you soon realise freedom is intrinsically related to on-going testing. And it comes at a cost. We either pay personally, or collectively via our taxes. It’s a conversation urgently needed in New Zealand.
Cha-ching at the border
Reading the outline of the border re-opening plan, I’ve wondered if many Kiwis are aware of the costs coming their way, both personally and at a collective level. An open-shut revolving border will decimate tourism and trust.
To welcome tourists and take holidays ourselves (without MIQ as the sole solution) we will need to spread responsibility over all citizens. Without widespread self-testing programs in schools, homes, work places and events, we have no second layer of defence.
New Zealanders aren’t currently living with this inconvenience and it will be hard to accept. Yet it’s scary to see us talking about a cautious border reopening, without already having a well-oiled self-testing regime in place.
But who pays for surveillance and travel testing? Should there be price controls and do we let the private sector loose?
The UK has quickly discovered vaccination is important, but not a silver bullet. Lets look at some of the other methods used and who pays:
Travel tests
To leave the UK this summer, we needed to undertake between 2 and 5 Covid tests depending on the entry rules at our destination and whether the country was low, medium or high risk (green, amber and red traffic light system).
At one point the amber rules (encompassing most of Europe) required pre-flight Covid tests in each direction, plus two post-travel swabs and 10 days home isolation. The cost of four tests for each member of the family and 10 days at home caused people to give up. An early release scheme on day-5 had additional costs.
Things have now loosened up in some locations.
On a trip to France and Greece in July my costs involved:
£85 fit-to-fly PCR test at a British pharmacy (local bookings were full so I had to drive to another city).
No costs between France and Greece. Vaccinated travellers don’t require a Covid test.
€35 fit-to-fly Antigen test at a Greek health centre (these were in every village and set up for tourists to make the return home easy).
£47 PCR self-test on day-2 after my return (had to drive 50km to a drop off point to get it that cheap).
No home isolation in the UK, as I’m double vaxed.
Jiggle those currencies and you end up with $325 per person.
That’s big money if you’re a family of four. It was also a lucky escape financially. A return via France rather than Greece would have resulted in 10 days home isolation and the cost of a £250 ($500) kit for post-travel swabs. Add in exit and entry tests and a family of four would spend $3000 on Covid tests for a romp around the French Alps. It’s eye watering when my airfare back was only £60 ($120).
Children under the age of 10 don’t need to be tested. That’s a cost saving on one hand, but a border weakness on the other. International tourists coming to New Zealand will expect this type of exemption.
In the UK it was decided early on that your-holiday equals your-cost. There are no publicly funded tests for citizens or tourists. Anyone turning up with a free PCR or Antigen test from the National Health Service is denied boarding. In contrast, the French gave all visitors free travel tests to return home, to attract tourism. They’ve now started charging, but it was an early bonus.
While the UK travel testing programs are technically well-designed and sound extensive, I should really let you in on a few secrets (both good and bad). Our own government could avoid the same mistakes.
You only have to pay for post-travel tests, you don’t actually have to do them
No one checks and the technology isn’t linked. To board your flight home you must complete a passenger locator form and submit a code given to you by the Covid testing company. When you arrive home and discover you need to drive 50km to a drop-box or pay for a medical courier that accepts snot-box samples, people bin them.
Quality slippage
Some private companies post out test-kits and use a video call to watch you take the swab. This works well but standards are slipping. Some will issue a fit-to-fly certificate based on a photograph of a negative test next to your passport. Let’s be frank – there’s no proof you swabbed your nose or the cats bottom.
A consumer rights and pricing fiasco
The government approved 400 testing companies at speed and let them loose. They promptly enticed you to their website with prices that were only available if you drove to a remote industrial estate and drip-priced all the postage and courier costs. Some used company names beginning with the letter ‘A’ to get to the top of the government list. Others employed couriers who dumped testing kits at the post-office, forcing people who were supposed to be isolating to leave the house to collect them. Many only provided expensive PCR tests when plenty of Euro destinations accepted the far cheaper Antigen tests.
Border queues
Officers had to manually check proof of vaccination, Covid tests and locator forms. The airlines have now been put in charge of this and there’s a quick entry via the passport e-gates. Airlines such as Air France get you to upload your forms the day before travel and send a ready-to-fly boarding pass once they approve you. Border and airline technology is moving fast.
Airport testing is cheap and well organised
For an Antigen test at Heathrow I booked a slot and entered a row of cubicles with curtains in the departures area. The young woman who performed the test said I’d have an email before I could finish a coffee. She was right. The cost was £35 ($70). A rapid PCR test at Heathrow takes 3 hours and costs £95 ($190). On the high street a same-day PCR is £300 ($600) and £85 ($170) for a result in 48 hours. Most people are too nervous to wait until the day of a flight for a test. Fear of queues and missing takeoff weigh heavily. Allowing slots to be booked does ease this concern.
Community surveillance in the UK
UK school testing
Free. Kids in year 7 and above test themselves twice a week and are provided with free antigen tests that take 20-30 minutes to get a result. They upload the result online.
UK home tests
Free. I went to the pharmacy recently and another four boxes of Antigen tests were given to me. There are 7 tests in each box. They’re like a little science experiment where you wash your hands and layout your vial, liquid, swab and test-reader. It’s by no means as solid as a PCR, but they’ve become accepted for surveillance and a normal part of life.
Event testing
Entry is given on a vax-or-test basis. You can show a QR code to prove you’re double-jabbed or a Covid test if you’re unvaccinated. Again these layers are not bulletproof, as our three teens at the Cornish festival will attest. They all had negative self-tests uploaded onto their National Health app before leaving home, but people jump fences, supply fraudulent test results and vaccinated people can attend unchecked. As we know, vaccination isn’t proof you’re Covid-negative.
There’s so much for New Zealanders to discuss in the coming months. We need to decide which costs are met individually and how much collective responsibility we are prepared to take for surveillance testing. The goal is to have a border that is stable, open and trusted to remain so.
Janine Starks is the author of www.moneytips.nz and can be contacted at moneytips.nz@gmail.com. She is a financial commentator with expertise in banking, personal finance and funds management. Opinions are a personal view and general in nature. They are not a recommendation for any individual to buy or sell a financial product. Readers should always seek specific independent financial advice appropriate to their own circumstances.