The MIQ experience
How the billion dollar+ MIQ destroyed hearts and minds while being promoted as world class
From the 26th of March 2020 to the end of June 2022, a total of 229,958 people went through MIQ. MIQ began it’s overdue wind-down in February and March 2022 for travellers - as an explosion of cases in the community made it farcical.
189,315 of that 230k total went through MIQ to the 13th of November 2021, when the experience took a total of 14 days. Out of that number and up to that date - how many people who were arriving through the border tested positive for Covid?
Guess. I’ll wait.
1,401.
Curiously I found the Chief Ombudsman stated the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment (MBIE) who ran MIQ told him during his 2021 MIQ investigation, published in early December 2021, that MIQ had stopped 4,600 cases at the border.
While overall 5,000 members of the community also went through MIQ when they tested positive or were just close contacts - this doesn’t account for the border number given to the Ombusman in 2021.
And it’s incorrect by MBIE’s own border data at that time, but perhaps…actually no, I won’t find a charitable answer to grasp, on the face of it this appears incorrect by MBIE’s own data.
However, the number of positive border cases did rise markedly shortly after the Chief Ombudsman said that, with the arrival of Omicron. New Zealand’s 1st border case of Omicron arrived on the 10th of December 2022. And the length of stay that was reduced in mid-November 2021 from 14 days to 7 days of MIQ, with 3 days home isolation, jumped back to 10 days in MIQ.
With the arrival of the less severe but more transmissible Omicron. (More transmissible generally means a shorter incubation period.)
Which also coincided with New Zealand reaching a 90% vaccination target.
I think I’m making my point.
By the time MIQ was being ditched as a entrance requirement, total cases at the border and in the community who went to MIQ, jumped from 1,401 to over 4,400 at the end of February 2022. Some further border and community cases were still being put in MIQ as late as June 2022.
While I can understand the reasoning behind clinical decisions being excluded from the Royal Commission of Inquiry, it’s problematic to me that reflection on whether it was ever justified to require 14 days (which I assume is clinically determined) is not being reviewed.
14 days was a huge imposition at incredible cost. Especially when almost everyone had to have a negative PCR test prior to departure.
And that 14 days could be extended to a month if someone was a contact of a positive case. Some families, once 1 of them tested positive, tried to catch it so they could be released from being stuck in a hotel room with small children and no laundry or kitchen.
And - I’m not done - almost all of those 1,401 cases were found on the day 3 PCR test in MIQ - but that clear fact didn’t lead to the reduction in MIQ timeframes until mid-November 2021.
In fact the overdue delay in ditching MIQ had commentators clutching at straws to justify it, calling it necessary to prepare (what on earth had been happening for the 2 years previously?) and allowing more booster doses to be administered, alongside getting 5 to 11 year olds vaccinated. But children being vaccinated, would have had no impact on immunity, and children were at exceedingly low risk of severe outcomes. If you read the Covid-19 Vaccination Technical Advisory Group memo on this, their discussion bases the rationale for approving vaccination in that age group as skewed towards equity considerations.
I also think it’s hard to be reflective, let alone critical, when you make statements calling MIQ world class, and continually re-iterating its necessity through the years it was in place:
Or host a self-congratulatory exhibit at Parliament on the experience.
Or against the overall background that New Zealand and it’s politicians seemed to relish, of being a ‘pandemic success story’ that other countries were simply in awe of.
MIQ surveys & research
If someone went through MIQ between May 2021 to January 2022 they were invited to do a survey afterwards through MBIE vendor Cemplicity. The anonymous survey “…helped [MBIE] understand what was working well, and where we could make improvements.” I mean, sure.
1 page summaries of the surveys are available on MBIE’s website. Some raw data is available on data.govt.nz.
You know you can manipulate a survey to give you any answer you want - it’s all in how you word the questions? So I’m going to ignore MBIE’s cutesy dashboard of responses in favor of the comments:
Which they didn’t release.
The above screenshot is from the October 2021 survey and is pretty standard if you flick through a few of them - less than a third of comments are positive and most hate the government. I mean MIQ. The MBIE 2021/22 annual report added benchmarks for MIQ, which state an amazing 85% of returnees rated everything positively. Sure!
Media reported that by March 2021, 30 people had been referred in MIQ for mental health difficulties. 1 man had his stay extended due to being a contact of a Covid case to a total of 28 days "It was a terrible time," he said, "my life was taken out of my own hands, and it was a scary place to be."
By February 2022, a Grounded Kiwis (who successfully challenged the allocation system for MIQ in court) survey found that 80% of people in MIQ experienced panic attacks and depression.
Otago University did a probably more realistic survey and despite what I said about their commentators/lobbyists in my mask series - it ain’t bad. They do push how MIQ is the only option indefinitely and no hardship is too hard, but their questions were in-depth.
Interviewing 75 people who had undergone MIQ between April 2020 and July 2021 major themes were: the variability of MIQ facilities and the lack of cleanliness of rooms, being forced to do it with young children in 1 room, the patronising attitudes of New Zealand staff on arrival, the lack of ability to exercise adequately and of course the overall difficulties of being able to access MIQ in the 1st place.
Being in MIQ
In 1 of my favorite OIAs that I’ve come across so far - a requester asked for copies of the ‘sustained "propaganda’ that MIQ returnees were subjected to. The requester got back the various psych ops emails, requirements and posters that were used in the Unite Against Covid branding. MIQ returnees were also subject to behavioral nudging to get them to wash their hands and physically distance, as well as being asked to be in trials within the facility - the trials failed but CCTV was significantly ramped up in facilities.
Although smoking was allowed in MIQ facilities it wasn’t until after the day 0 test (this is the 1st test after arrival - not the 1 that was negative before you boarded the plane). They were sympathetic but firm.
Exercise? No. You did not get to book your 30 minute to 1 hour daily walk outside your room (usually in circles around the hotel carpark) until that 1st test came back negative. Also the walk was just that - it had to be low intensity so you did not breath heavily or perspire.
Despite MBIE’s assurances everything was great in MIQ, the Ombudsman set up a dedicated team due to the volume of MIQ complaints they were getting. And went so far as to, like prisons, inspect MIQ facilities under the Crimes of Torture Act 1989. Although MIQ documentation referred to people as ‘returnees’, the Ombudsman was more realistic calling them ‘detainees’ and referring to MIQ as ‘detention’. This seems correct when $6 million alone was spent on thermal CCTV in case ‘returnees break out’.
On that note, the term ‘returnees’ was clearly wrongly used by MBI, as many people who went through MIQ were not necessarily from New Zealand - thousands of rooms went to visiting musicians, stage crews and sports teams.
The cost of MIQ
Charges evolved over the time of MIQ - with many people required to pay varying amounts based on their residency status and length of stay in New Zealand. From the 14th of November, when MIQ dropped from 14 to 7 days, with 3 further days of self-isolation, the cost was lowered too. Generally it was a bit over $3k for most people before the change, topping out at a maximum of $5k for stays.
Sports teams had to pay a higher price of roughly $7k for their allocated rooms and special considerations for facilities where they could go outside and train within their bubbles. This was less than the estimated price of $22k that those considerations cost. As a group, sports teams were the 2nd highest takers of MIQ rooms, behind primary industries. As late as October 2021, MBIE asked then Minister for Covid-19 Chris Hipkins to consider further room allocations to be set aside for teams (alongside orchestra members and film crew). Hipkins disagreed with it.
It was a continuing struggle to get some payments back after invoicing people. However, the stated bad debt of $10 million in that link would hardly have recouped MIQ costs. Over half a billion had been explicitly spent by MIBIE and the Ministry of Health by the end of June 2021. In fact, by the 31st of May 2021, $20.5 million had been spent on just transporting people to MIQ facilities - and transport alone appears to have racked up a few more million on top of that by early 2022.
The MBIE 2021/22 annual report has some figures but I’ll rely on media articles that showed by March 2022, when the requirement was mostly canned, close to $1.3 billion had spent on direct costs. And MIQ wasn’t fully wound down until June 2022.
Alarmingly, additional work is still being carried out by MBIE, to develop a business case investigating the establishment of a National Quarantine Capability. MIQ is currently on standby with providers to supply 1,250 rooms.
Although the contracts don’t cost anything - this is despite the fact it would require emergency legislation to be passed, the MIQ allocation system was found in a High Court case to have been unreasonable, and the risk the government runs of losing the social license to make any of these rules if it were to implement MIQ again.