The New Zealand government announced today that all current COVID-19-related rules and restrictions on businesses and services will be lifted when the country moves to Public Health Alert Level One at midnight tonight.
Northport will observe rigorously, and expects all companies operating at the Northport facility to follow, the ‘golden rules’ of Level One:
- all staff will be required to stay home if ill (no Kiwi staunchness will be tolerated)
- staff with cold or flu-like symptoms will be asked to undertake a test for COVID-19
- anybody working at the port who has flu-like symptoms will be expected to self-isolate until the results of a COVID-19 test are received
- current enhanced hand-washing and sanitising protocols will remain in place
- current enhanced surface cleaning and disinfection protocols will remain in place
- anybody working at the port will be asked to observe sneezing and coughing etiquette
- we will maintain contact-tracing requirements for all visitors to the port, and will display a QE code for the official NZ COVID Tracer app
- staff will remain vigilant for any sign of COVID-19 symptoms, and for any breach of these ‘golden rules’.
Immigration restrictions and policing remain the responsibility of NZ Customs and Immigration New Zealand. Ships’ crews will need to comply with all restrictions and limitations imposed on them by these agencies. Any queries about the nature of these restrictions and limitations will need to addressed to these agencies.
It remains only for us to say a massive ‘thank you’ to our staff and all those who work here and helped ensure that this essential facility remained operational throughout lock-down, and to all their families, whanau and loved ones, for everything they have all done to get us successfully to this point.
Special thanks, too, to our customers, our suppliers and our neighbouring communities for their patience and their support over this period.
Together we will remain vigilant because, as the Prime Minister and Director-General of Health have said quite clearly, COVID-19 still stalks the borders of our island nation, looking for a way to get in. If and when it does, our team of five million needs to be ready and able to defeat it again.
He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tāngata, he tāngata, he tangata. Ngā mihi, and thank you!
