New Zealand has been able to keep corona out fairly successfully, partly due to strict quarantine rules for people entering the country. But the case of a pregnant New Zealand journalist sparks another debate about the rules.
Charlotte Bellis, a former Al Jazeera correspondent, wrote this weekend in an open letter that she has been forced to seek refuge in Afghanistan, because she has nowhere else to go. The entry rules for New Zealanders should be easing at the end of next month, when she would be 29 weeks pregnant, but that was postponed. So she had to find a place to stay while she could apply to return to New Zealand under the current rules.
She worked in Qatar, but being pregnant is illegal there. She then left for Belgium, the country where her partner comes from. Only she wouldn’t be able to stay there indefinitely until the delivery.
One option was to hop from country to country on tourist visas until she gave birth, or return to Afghanistan, where she had worked for years with her partner. She had a visa for that country to be able to stay there for a longer period of time. She contacted the Taliban, who guaranteed that nothing would happen to her.
Lottery
Bellis’s story focuses the spotlight on New Zealand’s corona policy, which many perceive as harsh. Even those who have had three vaccinations as a New Zealander, such as Bellis, must quarantine for ten days in specially equipped locations when they return to their own country. To be eligible, you must obtain one of the 4,500 quarantine spots through a lottery system.
Many New Zealanders are left out and cannot return. However, there are some ways to get priority. Bellis made an emergency request on medical grounds. Pregnancy can be covered under certain circumstances, but there is no separate exception for pregnant women. The reason Bellis’s application was rejected was, among other things, that the travel date she suggested was only more than fourteen days away.
Because of the omikron variant, New Zealand tightened the rules this month. That’s why Prime Minister Ardern postponed her own wedding:
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