Extend the border restrictions to include countries and states that have Covid-19 established and consistently spreading. At the moment the NZ government has only done this with China and Iran, they need to extend this further to at least Italy, South Korea and Japan at this point and unfortunately the list will possibly grow over the next few weeks (Update: this list includes, Countries like France, Germany, Spain with thousands of cases already confirmed and the virus spreading very quickly and any other countries that now fit the category of having the virus established and consistently spreading).

Also we are requesting that the government make it a mandatory requirement that people that can still come into the country from China, Iran, Italy, South Korea and Japan and the other places as above (Hong Kong, Singapore etc), are self isolated and registered with checks instead of it being optional as to whether they wish to take it seriously or not as it is at the moment (see bottom of the page for more details)

The WHO’s statement (01/03/20) says something about how governments around the world are not taking this seriously enough, it talks about the risk from this being ‘very high’ and is telling governments around the world to ‘wake up’ https://news.yahoo.com/us-workers-didnt-proper-gear-130000439.html after this becoming widespread in China, Iran, Italy, South Korea, Japan with many other countries having the virus arrive within their borders (we just have information about people who have come to the attention of the authorities, estimates are that the actual number is far higher) and climbing at an alarming rate and has now arrived in NZ.

The NZ Government had previously announced a number of weeks ago that they had put border restrictions in place for non-New Zealanders (unless they are immediate family members of NZer's) who have been to or transited through mainland China they have now included Iran in this following the introduction of the virus here by someone from Iran. They also need to extend this to the other countries listed here and not wait until someone else travelling from there brings it here as happened from Iran.

It was only around a week ago that some of these countries (Iran and Italy)  had just a handful of confirmed cases now it is widespread in these countries. There are numerous countries that have this now and look like China did regarding confirmed cases when attention was brought to the new virus emerging there just over a month ago. This virus can be transmitted by people showing no symptoms and is spreading rapidly across a number of countries across the world now.

Once we see more people with it here who have begun to show symptoms there will be even more people already infected who will also be spreading that to even more people. We need to extend the border restrictions to other countries who have the virus consistently spreading otherwise more starting points for the virus to spread from will end up in NZ as it is we can still possibly contain and stop the virus or if not we can slow down it's progression and give us more time until a vaccine is hopefully produced (that could take from months to years to produce) by preventing any other people with it from bringing it here.

The WHO had recently urged countries to be 'aggressive in tackling the coronavirus'. They said this for a reason and that was that if it is not taken seriously then it is going to end up killing a lot of people. If you look away from the confusing reporting about it in the media and look at interviews with professors that are experts in this, they are saying that we don't know whether this will be a 2-3% (which is around what the media are telling us that it will most likely be) fatality rate yet as there are still tens of thousands of people with this virus that we don't know the outcome for yet because they still have it. Some reports are saying that the virus is airborne though others are saying things that contradict this.

At the moment around 8% of the recorded cases of recovery/fatality have died. The rest are still in hospital with around 19% in a severe/critical condition. It is important to not spread panic, but it would be better to stop more people with the virus from bringing it here and with one case recorded in NZ at this point and one starting point we are aware of so far we are in a position a lot of countries are not in right now to stop it spreading and bring it under control, but that will definitely change if we don't do something to respond to the other countries outside of China and Iran that definitely have the virus there and widespread now.

These deadly pandemics are something that happen regularly throughout human history, the events that happen during them include the mistakes that are made in them and the actions that people take that end up protecting and saving the lives of people unfortunate enough to be there in that time. Don't think that we are going to be OK through this because we live in a time or place that we think is immune to something like this happening...We don't and it can spread to a person and people in NZ the same as it would to someone from China. This is a horrible illness that is causing a significant amount of the people who get it to suffer terribly whilst suffocating to death. It is also causing organ damage in significant numbers of people who have defeated the illness, who are dying from a secondary problem/problems afterwards like kidney failure, cardiac injury or sepsis. 

There are so many unknowns that it is not worth taking the risk and hoping 'she'll be right'. What is known is that a lot of people are dying and that it is a terrible illness to have for a lot of people who get it. If you look it up and read into it, RNA viruses (this is an RNA virus) are known to mutate at high levels, which means this could get worse than it is already.

The petition here is asking the NZ Government to extend the border restrictions to include other countries (or states within a country) that are emerging as having Covid-19 consistently spreading there, like South Korea, Japan and Italy (any other countries that fit the criteria).

It is also asking the Government to make sure that people who are at risk of having brought Covid-19 into the country from places with it consistently spreading that we are still receiving flights from are required to be self quarantined rather than just hoping that they self isolate without any real checks if they choose to not want to take it too seriously, due to thousands of people who have returned from some of these places and are seen to be potentially at risk having not registered (see below for more details)

———————————————————-

Update 29/02/20: As most people are aware covid-19 is now in New Zealand and arrived here with someone who was infected who had travelled here from Iran. 

We wrote in our update (available to view underneath the petition) on February 23rd informing everyone that we were now asking the government to include Italy and Iran in the list of countries to extend the border restrictions to, because they now met the criteria in the petition. They obviously didn’t do that. On February 26th the person infected with Covid-19 entered the country.

As we mentioned, this petition was to keep the virus out of the country or if not, then to keep the number of infected people down and prevent new starting points, so there is more chance to contain this. The request in this petition still stands regarding extending the border restrictions to places like Iran, Italy and South Korea or anywhere where the virus is established and consistently spreading and we are requesting on top of that that anyone including New Zealand citizens or residents who are still allowed back into the country from these places, who have been in any of the countries that meet the above criteria during the last 14 days not be allowed to board any flight to New Zealand (potentially infecting the other people on board and people here when they arrive), until after they have quarantined themselves and registered with NZ authorities for the verification  of that for at least that 14 days prior to flying and are required to participate in a further 14 days mandatory self isolation and to register with the ministry of health upon returning. If there is a need to evacuate NZers for safety reasons, the government should provide a means to get anyone back to NZ without putting the people here at risk of being infected by this disease.

it is not easy to put in place adequate measures to prevent the virus spreading here, but these measures are a lot easier than the lockdown and other extreme measures that would be put in place should this not be contained and mean a lot less people dying from this if it is contained. We can not just hope for the best with this.

——————————————————