'A new beginning': New Zealand to drop Covid vaccine passes and mandates
Source: The Guardian
‘A new beginning’: New Zealand to drop Covid vaccine passes and mandates
PM Jacinda Ardern, who oversaw some of the toughest restrictions in the world, says rules will relax after Omicron peak in early April
Eva Corlett in Wellington
@evacorlett
Wed 23 Mar 2022 01.05 GMT
New Zealand will do away with vaccine passes and vaccine mandates for some of the workforce in early April, in a major loosening of the country’s tough Covid-19 restrictions.
The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, announced the changes on Wednesday morning, citing high vaccination rates, better data to identify which environments are high risk, and modelling that suggests the country’s Omicron outbreak would peak in early April.
The country reported 20,087 new cases on Wednesday, 960 people in hospital and a further 11 deaths, bringing the total number of Covid-19 deaths since the start of the pandemic to 210. New Zealand has officially recorded more than 500,000 cases of Covid-19 – nearly all of them during the Omicron wave – but modellers expect the true figure could now could be as high as 1.7 million. Modelling suggests Auckland has now reached peak cases, with numbers slowly dropping, and the rest of the country is expected to reach its peak by 5 April.
“We’ve been signalling for some time that when we come off the peak, that would be the time to be able to ease the use of things like vaccine passes and mandates,” Ardern said.
The changes include scrapping all gathering limits in outdoor settings and removing requirements for people to use the Covid-19 tracer app to scan in when entering businesses. Hospitality and other venues can increase their indoor gathering limit from 100 to 200 from Friday.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/23/a-new-beginning-new-zealand-to-drop-covid-vaccine-passes-and-mandates
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