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14 February 2023
R S Grant
[FYI request #20776 email]
Tēnā koe R S Grant
Your request for official information, reference: HNZ00007733
Thank you for your email of 27 November 2022, asking for the following which has been
considered under the Of icial Information Act 1982 (the act):
1. I am looking for any information at all that you can provide that can demonstrate, with
evidential support, that the NZ Traveller Declaration was actually used for something in
practice. Not in theory - in practice.
2. Please provide any information that you have that can support your earlier statement that
“the NZ Traveller Declaration has been a highly valuable resource for our contact tracing
team when investigating border cases”.
3. Please provide the total number of cases that your contact tracing teams worked on during
the period since the NZ Traveller Declaration was introduced, by month.
I wil respond to each part of your request in turn.
1. I am looking for any information at all that you can provide that can demonstrate, with
evidential support, that the NZ Traveller Declaration was actually used for something in
practice. Not in theory - in practice.
2. Please provide any information that you have that can support your earlier statement that
“the NZ Traveller Declaration has been a highly valuable resource for our contact tracing
team when investigating border cases”.
The New Zealand Traveller Declaration (NZTD)
1 was designed for and used during the period
when New Zealand had quarantine free travel arrangements with our international neighbours.
During this period, when a community case was reported, communications were sent to all
travellers who had travelled to (or from) the region the case had been in during their infectious
period. Data from the NZTD was used for these communications which alerted travellers to the
increased risk of COVID-19 exposure. As per
Table One below, data from the NZTD was used to
communicate with 89,992 travellers over this time.
The NZTD was also used to assist to source contact details for cases and close contacts. The
National Investigation and Tracing Centre runs a “Finders Service” that is used contact details are
not readily available or out of date. The Finders Service uses a range of available databases to
search for contact details, and the NZTD data was used as part of this As outlined in
Table One,
over 33,000 records were referred to the Finders Service between the period April 2023 – October
2022.
Data from the NZTD was valuable for sourcing contact details of close contacts who had recently
arrived into the country, as it contained more up to date details than other national data sets.
1 The New Zealand Travel er Declaration replaced a system called Nau Mai Rā. Nau Mai Rā was established in the first
quarter of 2021 and the NZTD became operational in March 2022. The NZTD was then disestablished on 20 October
2022.
Whilst we are not able to identify individual instances of when data from the NZTD was used to
source correct contact information for cases or contacts, we trust that this summary level of
information responds to your request and demonstrates when the NZTD has been used in practice.
Table One contains the numbers of:
• cases reported during the months the NZTD was in place,
• cases and contacts referred to the Finders Service for further investigation, where the
NZTD was one of several data sets used to find contact details,
• travellers contacted due to a community case during the time the quarantine free travel
arrangements were in place.
3. Please provide the total number of cases that your contact tracing teams worked on during
the period since the NZ Traveller Declaration was introduced, by month.
Please refer to
Table One enclosed.
If you have any questions, you can contact us at
[email address].
If you are not happy with this response, you have the right to make a complaint to the
Ombudsman. Information about how to do this is available at
www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or
by phoning 0800 802 602.
As this information may be of interest to other members of the public, Te Whatu Ora may
proactively release a copy of this response on our website. Al requester data, including your name
and contact details, wil be removed prior to release. The released response wil be made available
on our website.
Nāku iti noa, nā
Chrystal O’Connor
Group Manager, National Investigation Centre and Testing
Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand
Table One: Data for the period the Nau Mai Rā or New Zealand Traveller Declaration were
operational (01-04-2021 – 20-10-2022)
Number of cases
Cases and contacts sent to
Quarantine free travellers
Month
reported
Finders Service
contacted
Apr-21
115
-
1
May-21
54
1,438
25,359
Jun-21
72
340
47,047
Jul-21
126
175
17,507
Aug-21
770
4,633
8
Sep-21
656
1,513
-
Oct-21
2,326
964
-
Nov-21
5,142
2,054
-
Dec-21
2,437
791
-
Jan-22
2,510
1,148
-
Feb-22
103,904
2,817
-
Mar-22
552,066
7,677
-
Apr-22
265,794
1,745
-
May-22
238,099
1,642
-
Jun-22
176,352
1,328
-
Jul-22
269,114
2,702
-
Aug-22
120,990
1,534
-
Sep-22
44,298
400
-
Oct-22
38,459
276
-
Total
1,823,284
33,177
89,922
TeWhatuOra.govt.nz
Te Whatu Ora, PO Box 793,
Wel ington 6140, New Zealand
