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Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Covid Response Minister Ayesha Verrall will discuss public health advice and consider a number of changes to the traffic light settings when Cabinet meets next week. Photo: Getty Images
Jo Moir is Newsroom's political editor.
Covid-19
A Covid briefing from health officials on Wednesday will set the scene for any loosening of restrictions announced by the Government next week
Analysis: When Cabinet meets next week, isolation periods, critical worker exemptions, mask mandates, vaccination at the border and online declaration forms will all be reviewed as part of a post-winter promise.
On Wednesday Dr Andrew Old, the head of the new Public Health Agency that has taken over responsibility for the Covid-19 response, will brief the media on the latest numbers and trends as winter technically comes to an end.
As of Friday, the weekly rolling average of new infections had dropped under 2000 to 1948 cases, the first time since the Omicron outbreak started in February.
Hospitalisations are also dropping, indicating cases are actually declining rather than it being a result of a dip in testing.
A group of ministers responsible for signing off on Covid orders have been reviewing settings at the start of each month since the end of the first Omicron wave.
This month Cabinet will wrap its September review into a wider look at the traffic light settings and restrictions, which will take into account the decline in hospitalisations and cases and whether the country is ready to move down to green.
The health briefing on Wednesday will lay out the facts and figures behind the public health advice ministers will rely on when making decisions about restrictions.
Everything is under “active consideration’’ according to the Prime Minister.
While some loosening of restrictions is highly anticipated given the downward trend in cases, Jacinda Ardern told Newsroom where the settings land is about what is the “best option for your population base’’.
That’s a nod to Ardern’s tendency to steer an independent course for the country’s Covid recovery, and not be swayed by what other governments are doing – especially at a time when many critics of the mask mandates and seven days’ isolation are pointing to Australia’s loosening of the rules.
From Friday Australia’s isolation period will drop to five days, except for workers in high-risk vulnerable settings, and masks will be scrapped on domestic flights.
Whether the Covid Protection Framework is still fit for purpose is another discussion Cabinet plans to have later this year, particularly in light of any new variants, and because the legislation that allows for the public health orders expires in April.
Newsroom understands that won’t be part of next week’s review but will be dealt with in the coming months.
Remaining border settings
For anyone travelling to New Zealand there are three Covid requirements still in place after the border, for the most part, reopened last month.
Tourists have to be vaccinated to enter the country and anyone coming across the border, including citizens and residents, have to fill out an online declaration form.
The third requirement is that arrivals do two RATS on roughly day one and day five and isolate if there’s a positive result.
As Kiwis start travelling abroad again social media is full of criticisms about how long the online declaration form takes to fill out, and that it duplicates the information already collected by Customs on arrival.
That’s because New Zealand citizens and residents don’t have to be vaccinated to enter the country so don’t need to fill out the section asking for proof of vaccination.
Cabinet will next week give serious consideration to dropping the online declaration requirement for New Zealand citizens and residents.
That would make the form specific to tourists, but if a decision is made to follow Australia’s suit and drop vaccination requirements for tourists, the declaration would become redundant.
Last month Verrall told Newsroom she had “considerable uncertainty’’ that vaccination requirements for tourists would drop in time for New Zealand’s summer.
She pointed to the United Kingdom, European and some American hospitals all being under considerable pressure in the middle of their own summer season after dropping most public health restrictions.
Government vague on test-to-release
Ardern wouldn’t confirm on Monday whether test-to-release would be considered as part of the review, which would allow cases to finish isolation after five days providing they had two negative RAT results in a row.
Test-to-release is seen as a win-win after Covid-19 Aotearoa Modelling trialled several different scenarios.
A minimum isolation period of five days, but requiring two negative tests in a row to end isolation, would both cut the percentage of cases released while still infectious and reduce the average number of days in isolation.
But Ardern won’t say whether the test-to-release tool was specifically being looked at.
In an interview with Newsroom last month, Covid Response Minister Ayesha Verrall’s argument for not reducing the isolation period was that “it seems to be a pretty wide consensus now that if you cut it to five, there will be infectious people released before they no longer pose a risk to others”.
In a statement to Newsroom last week Verrall also declined to say whether test-to-release was part of the upcoming review.
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