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The 50 passengers to board the first repatriation flight from Auckland to Tonga will probably be selected next week, confirmed MEIDECC CEO, Paula Ma’u today, 17 June. “If that goes well, it depends on health and their analysis on whether we will increase the number and even the flights.” Otherwise at that rate, with about 7,000 Tongans overseas who want to return to Tonga, it might take years to repatriate everyone and quarantine will be costly. By Eleanor Gee.

Governments cannot openly admit that the "controlled easing” of COVID-19 lockdowns in fact means controlled progress toward so-called herd immunity to the virus. Because there is currently no COVID-19 vaccine, governments have had to find other ways to prevent “excess deaths.” Most have opted for lockdowns, which remove entire populations from the path of the virus and thus deprive it of hosts. But this strategy has a terrible weakness: governments cannot keep their populations locked down until a vaccine arrives. Apart from anything else, the economic cost would be unthinkable. So, they have to ease the lockdown gradually. By Robert Skidelsky

Air New Zealand will resume passenger flights between Auckland and Shanghai next week, with passengers subject to government border controls in each direction.

Tonga’s Ministry of Tourism has confirmed today that government is planning for the first repatriation flight of 50 Tongans “after next week as a start” and that the first passengers will arrive “in three weeks from last Friday, if everything is going as planned”.

The Australian Government has contributed AUD$1.9m to community organisations in Tonga earlier this month, to provide safe water supply, teach hand hygiene, and support agricultural development to protect against the impact of CoViD-19.

A trial for students to learn from home for one day on 30 June, has been organized by the Ministry of Education and Training, in case schools have to close should CoViD-19 reach Tonga. Teaching materials and lessons will be delivered to students at home through several platforms including internet, radio, TV, paper based distance education

In Parliament, the Committee of the Whole House on Thursday, 11 June passed the $166 million budget allocation of the Ministry of Finance for the 2020-21 Financial Year. From the House by Pesi Fonua.

An opportunity for at least 50 Tongans to return home amid the struggle to keep Tonga free from the novel coronavirus, was announced by the Prime Minister, Hon. Dr Pohiva Tu'i'onetoa, this afternoon 12 June.

‘Anisi Kulufeinga Bloomfield, a former CEO of the Ministry of Revenue and Customs is to be extradited to Fiji, where he is to be tried for offences of theft and dishonesty allegedly committed between 2011-14. A warrant for his arrest was issued in the Magistrate's Court of Fiji on 27 March 2018.