Opinion: The biosecurity implications of opening our borders

By Dr Germana Nicklin and Dee McDonald

On Thursday 3 February 2022, the Government announced the phased reopening of our borders.

Dr Germana Nicklin, Senior Lecturer in the Security Studies programme at Massey University, and Teaching Fellow Dee McDonald discuss the potential biosecurity implications of reopening.

“Since COVID-19, biosecurity has also become for the first time in modern history, since the 1918 influenza outbreak, about securing human lives from harmful pathogens, in this case viral infections,” Ms McDonald says. “We know in biosecurity that pathogens [viruses and bacteria] travel with hosts such as plants and animals, but this time humans are included in that risk profile.”

When things go wrong, and they do, as we’ve seen with COVID-19, governments will use their border control capabilities to secure their population, their economy or their environment from harm.

Aotearoa New Zealand is very good at biosecurity and those learnings have enabled it to bring biosecurity knowledge and practice to managing (and even eliminating for a sustained period) COVID-19.

Today, every country’s economy and social fabric depends on trade and in goods and people movement. Aotearoa is physically distant from most other countries.  Because our internal economy is small, we have to trade internationally. Any disruptions to that trade has big consequences, as we have been seeing with COVID-19.

Dr Nicklin says opening the border is a matter of trade-offs between the cost of possible risks and the benefit of keeping international trade and travel flowing. “This is not new. It happens all the time. The good news is that border agencies are used to managing this trade-off and adapting as new risks arise.”

She believes the biggest risk is the erosion of trust in government arising from uncertainty and fake information. “With COVID-19, the ground keeps shifting. It is very difficult for governments to provide certainty to their people about rules for crossing borders when the virus keeps mutating, and when other countries keep adapting their controls in response.

“One of the things that kept the pre-pandemic systems working was the use of international standards and practices for the movement of goods and people. COVID-19 has disrupted the bases on which these rules and practices operated. As a result, we are seeing different countries introducing different rules; not only that, these rules keep changing, removing the certainty that once existed,” Dr Nicklin says. 

Ms McDonald adds: “An obvious risk is that COVID-19 will become wide spread in the population, which will put the health care system under strain that it might not be able to bear – especially hard on the heels of two years’ of pandemic pressure with resourcing challenges, isolating staff etc.”

While there are risks to the borders reopening, there are also advantages, both say.

“Opening up of the border will allow more skilled workers to arrive, for the health care sector and for primary industries, which would be a positive change,” Ms McDonald says.

Another positive is that with border restrictions easing globally, the ‘just in time’ supply chain model that has resulted delays on goods and shortages in supermarkets might start to run more smoothly again.

Both Dr Nicklin and Ms McDonald acknowledge that people will have concerns about the borders reopening.

“It is difficult not to be worried,” Dr Nicklin says. “Delta came from overseas; Omicron came from overseas. Borders are clearly gateways for unwelcome visitors. Opening the border will inevitably see an increase in positive cases entering New Zealand. And we could see another variant – remember, we were getting on top of Delta just as Omicron came along. We can only hope the high proportion of vaccinated population will carry us through.

“We used to not think about our border very much, right? That was because the risks were managed pretty well. Now we are thinking about it much more. The difference now is that the border controls here and elsewhere are not as predictable as they once were. And that makes it hard not to be worried. Rather than being worried, it may be more helpful to accept that we just have to be more cautious now.”

Ms McDonald says everyone has their own level of comfort around risk. “For some there will be other imperatives that mean the border opening outweighs public health concerns. Others will be more fearful about the Omicron variant becoming widespread in the community. What we can and should do is practice good biosecurity as a society: get vaccinated, wear quality masks, work at home if you can, avoid public transport and large gatherings, sanitise hands, scan in.”

Both experts agree that biosecurity and border security management will need to be flexible and responsive to current and future changes.

“The Government’s announcement is designed to provide some certainty for businesses and people, but there is no guarantee this is the last word. If circumstances change, and they will, the Government may have to change the dates and the conditions for opening the border again,” Dr Nicklin says.

“With the border restrictions easing in phases, the biosecurity awareness around COVID-19 variants and the management of population health will need to remain flexible and responsive. The World Health Organization has not ruled out the possibility of further variants emerging around the world. The situation will be fluid for some time,” Ms McDonald adds.

“From a biosecurity perspective, a key concern remains the ability of zoonotic diseases to mutate into humans and travel quickly. This concern centres around illegal trade in wild animals, food markets involving wild animals and the intermingling of different animals in bio-insecure and stressful environments. These practices remain a global concern,” she says.

Dr Germana Nicklin is a Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at Massey University, where she teaches and researches border and maritime security.

Dee McDonald is a Teaching Fellow situated in the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at Massey University. Her area of expertise is biosecurity and she teaches introductory and advanced biosecurity courses from a social science perspective.