'User pay' quarantine for those entering NZ could mean more compliance, less staff needed

The idea of user-paid quarantine for people arriving in New Zealand could cut down on the footprint of wraparound services, but it may not be suitable for all.

Newsroom reporter Dileepa Fonseka told TVNZ1's Breakfast this morning converting hotels that aren't suitable for quarantine under the current system into user-paid isolation could be beneficial.

It comes after Housing Minister Megan Woods last week told media the forecasted cost to June 30 would be $81 million to hold 20,151 people in managed quarantine.

But the Government has since said it would consider making those in managed quarantine pay for part of the cost. 

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Cabinet would look at the possibility “very shortly” .

“This pandemic is growing… We are seeing it turning up with those Kiwis being quarantined at our borders,” Ms Ardern said.

“We will consider co-payment going forward. We haven’t pre-determined that outcome.”

Fonseka explored the possibility to " relieve a major choke point on our economy " in a Newsroom article yesterday.

"It is certainly possible to make some hotels that may have been unsuitable for quarantine under our current system, maybe use them for user-pay quarantine," he told Breakfast.

"Compliance will be greater. Also some of the hotel facilities would be more suitable. At the moment I think they're looking for hotels with kind of outdoor areas or places where they can kind of manage a large number of people, and also give them outdoor activities and things like that.

"Whereas with a user-pay system like in this instance, they can kind of have the ability to afford sanitation for gym equipment and that kind of thing, which is just not possible."

Fonseka said user-pay arrivals in New Zealand, ones who were not forced to uplift their lives due to the pandemic, would be more compliant - meaning less management around their stay.

A report into a pilot programme at SO Hotel in Auckland suggested the Government could still safely expand its quarantining supply if it were prepared to fund it or get those coming in to pay. 

"What they found was that when you cater for foreigners or to people that you can charge for it, it's a sort of different demographic involved. You perhaps need less personnel because one of the big constraints on this whole quarantine issue is simply the number of hotels that are available for this kind of thing. So there's only a suitable number of hotels, and then you've got to provide space for them to be able to go outside and have some physical activity," Fonseka said.

"And the other element of it is just the sheer Government footprint of the number of Government employees that you've got to have supervising it. But with this kind of user-pay managed isolation, what they found was they could cut that footprint down a bit because they got a bit more compliance from the people who were coming in. They had a need for less wraparound services because they were people who had chosen to come here - they weren't people who were having to uplift their lives because of a pandemic."

In the pilot, there was a small deck area for people to use, but they also had gym equipment divided up in the rooms.

However, Fonseka said it may not be suitable for everyone - for example the debate over international students.

The user pay system would only be small numbers and "with international students you're dealing with much larger numbers, and also potentially a younger demographic and we don't know how that will work in terms of compliance and issues like that", he said.