New Zealand is backing down: quarantine-free travel between Australia and its own country will be suspended again for at least eight weeks from Friday evening.

As so often in these times, the highly infectious Delta variant, which is increasingly spreading in Australia, is to blame. “We have always said that as the virus developed, our response would evolve. This is not a decision we made lightly, but it is the right decision to protect the New Zealanders, ”said Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. 

New Zealand had already taken this measure at the end of June, but then only for three days. In Australia, after a sharp increase in the number of infections in large parts of the country - in the metropolises of Sydney and Melbourne as well as the state of South Australia with the city of Adelaide - a strict lockdown was recently imposed again. The ORF reports.