Cabinet will meet on Monday afternoon to review the COVID-19 restrictions but the Prime Minister has hinted vaccine mandates won't be abandoned for every workforce.
Although ministers will make decisions on Monday, don't expect any substantive announcement until Wednesday morning. That gives the Government time to implement the changes and draft any necessary health orders.
Newshub Nation understands vaccine passes will likely be ditched by April 13, when Australian tourists can arrive in New Zealand, while mandates are likely to be dropped for most professions, but kept for health workers and in aged care.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told AM on Monday morning that advice has been sought from health experts about the use of vaccine mandates, which currently prohibit unvaccinated people from working in a number of public sector and close contact roles.
While they may be phased out for some, Ardern said they likely won't be ditched for every workforce.
"It's not the case that you'll see us, for instance, drop them everywhere," she said. "We do believe there will still be circumstances, particularly where there are highly vulnerable individuals, where they will still have a use, but we'll be discussing today just how far that use is."
The Prime Minister wouldn't confirm anything before Cabinet meets, but noted that public health experts have talked about retaining mandates in the aged care sector.
Vaccine passes may also be phased out, with Ardern saying our high rates of vaccination mean the tool doesn't have the same effect it once did.
Passes and mandates were introduced last year as a means of both incentivising vaccine uptake and giving confidence to vaccinated Kiwis that they are in a safe environment. Ministry of Health data from Sunday shows 95 percent of eligible New Zealanders over 12 have had two doses and 72.8 percent of those eligible have had their booster.
The high rate of transmission during the current Omicron outbreak has also been a gamechanger, Ardern said.
"With a highly vaccinated population and that group of unvaccinated New Zealanders, which was always relatively small, many of them will have now been exposed to COVID-19, so it means that the vaccine passes aren't critical as they once were for us.
"We've already given a really strong indication that once we're coming down the peak, once we feel assured that we're not continuing on the rise, that we would be looked looking to change those up and also change up the way we're using mandates as well."
Critics, like National and ACT, say it's time to move on from the current restrictions, which they say were helpful during the Delta outbreak, but not for Omicron, which has seen tens of thousands of more cases.
The opposition parties point to high vaccination rates, the impact on businesses and the fact that Australian tourists will soon be entering the country as reasons why restrictions should be relaxed.
National wants scanning requirements scrapped and vaccine passes dumped immediately for all but large indoor events. When tourists arrive on April 13, the party wants the traffic light system dumped and vaccine mandates phased out, with health workers the last to see mandates gone.
ACT, which published a cost-benefit analysis of COVID-19 measures last month, takes a similar stance, saying it's now hard to justify mandates and that passes should be dumped immediately, not in a few weeks' time.
But Ardern on Monday said it's important measures aren't thrown to the wayside forever as New Zealand may face challenges in the future.
"We know that this pandemic is still with us and, of course, whilst we hope it's much more predictable than it's been in the past, we do just want to make sure that we're always prepared.
"The same with the COVID protection framework, what people know as the traffic light system, some people have asked me why not just get rid of it entirely. We do know we will likely experience another wave over winter, so it's just a matter of being prepared for everything."
National's COVID-19 spokesperson Chris Bishop said last week there is a need to be flexible.
"The Government's instinct should be to remove restrictions on normal life as soon as they're no longer justified, not to hang on to them until there is zero risk. Of course, if the risk changes in the future we can always put the Framework back in place."
The Government's unlikely to announce any shift from the red traffic light setting this week, Ardern signalled on Monday. Cabinet will examine the framework and the rules associated with each level, rather than deciding whether to move the country down levels.
"We will be putting in regular review periods around the movement down the traffic light, but as you can see, we are still really, really stretched in many parts of the country with the number of cases that we have."
While there will be a shift in New Zealand's response, Ardern said not "everything goes out the window".
"There are ways that we can actually reduce down the restrictions as much as possible while still continuing to protect the highly vulnerable. We can do both. That is what our ambition has been all the way through."
Ardern said Labour's recent drop in polls, including behind the National Party in one, hasn't influenced the Government's decision to review the settings.
She has previously mentioned the need to look at the measures' merit when on the other side of the Omicron peak. That came after protesters swarmed Parliament in opposition to mandates and other restrictions.
What do experts think?
Dr Bryan Betty, the medical director of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners, told AM earlier on Monday that it appears Omicron cases are beginning to slide down from their peak, particularly in Auckland and likely for the rest of the country over the coming two to three weeks.
The Ministry of Health reported 12,020 new cases on Sunday, the lowest number in a single day since late February and down from the high of nearly 24,000 cases. The national rolling average was 17,278 cases on Sunday, compared to 19,566 a week ago. Health officials in Auckland last week said they were cautiously optimistic cases had peaked in the region.
"The mandates have done what they have done," Dr Betty said. "I think we need to really start to reset and start to remove the mandates. There is no doubt about that at this point. We need to look ahead at this point in terms of where we are going."
"There's no doubt we are probably going to see small peaks and surges of Omicron. But we're also going to see flu, possibly whooping cough, possibly RSV, possibly other viral illnesses so it's going to become a very mixed picture and we need to free up the system. So it comes down to timing."
Epidemiologist Dr Rod Jackson agreed the peak had been hit, but he believes it's up to four weeks too early to drop any of the public health measures "that help reduce both the number of infections and the speed in which it spreads". He also doesn't want to see a yo-yo situation as seen overseas, where some countries have experienced further waves.
New Zealand should stay at the same traffic light system setting country-wide, Dr Jackson said, rather than different levels in different regions.
"People are moving around all over the country. It makes no sense to do something for Auckland and something else for the rest of the country. We need to keep it simple. In two to four weeks, when this current outbreak is largely over, we can do something different.
"At the moment actually, I think we should be adding boosters to our vaccine passes because that's going to make a dramatic difference… hospitals are overwhelmed. We were right on the border of losing control. We need to keep all of these public health measures in place until we're over it."
