Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has rejected National's call to scrap the traffic light system over fears of "future peaks" of COVID-19.
"I disagree with them," Ardern said on Friday in response to National urging the Government to "immediately" scrap the COVID Protection Framework. National also wants to phase out vaccine mandates, abolish QR code scanning, and move to a five-day isolation period.
"There will be other waves of Omicron and we have to make sure that we have the system in place that allows life to be as normal as possible for business, for tourists, for visitors, for those wanting to enjoy hospitality, whilst still putting in place the protections we need so that our health system isn't overwhelmed," Ardern said.
"Through the COVID Protection Framework, those are measures we've put in place so that people can go about life but with extra measures that help keep them safe: mask use, large gathering limits, guidance on how to be in those high-risk environments like hospitality - seated and separated - that do make it as safe as possible to go out and continue to enjoy all of those things."
The Government shifted the entire country to the most restrictive 'red' traffic light setting in late January after nine cases of Omicron were discovered in the community. The Ministry of Health is now reporting an average of 17,000 cases a day.
Ardern argued that the red setting, which restricts gatherings to 100 vaccinated people and forces guests to be seated and separated at hospitality venues, is keeping the outbreak under control.
"We are still at a place in this outbreak where we do have high hospitalisations, where we do have pressure on our health system because we have a health workforce that's also affected by COVID themselves," Ardern said.
"We do need to ensure that we're continuing to be cautious but we're also planning for when we come down the other side and when we can start to ease many of those restrictions."
There are currently more than 900 people in hospital with COVID-19 in New Zealand. However, Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said on Tuesday that of the COVID-19 hospitalisations from March 2-11 at Waikato Hospital, "only about 20 percent were there primarily to have their COVID-related symptoms treated".
Health workers are nevertheless struggling under the pressure to treat such a large cohort of patients and maintain sufficient staffing with so many falling ill or needing to be isolated as a household contact of a case.
Ardern said the Government will need to have the "tools available to us" if another Omicron outbreak, or future variant, comes along.
"We want to be able to ensure we've got planned care going on in our hospitals. We want to make sure people are getting the acute care they need. So, we have to build in the fact that we will keep having those peaks but manage them in our health system alongside all the other things our health system needs to be doing day in, day out."
Dr Bloomfield says New Zealand might not even experience another peak of Omicron because of the type that's prevalent in the community.
"We have got a predominance of the BA2 sub-variant and you will have seen around the world evidence emerging that this sub-variant - and some people even think it's a separate variant - is about 30 percent more transmissible than the BA1 sub-variant variant," Dr Bloomfield said on Tuesday.
The likes of New South Wales and the UK have experienced multiple Omicron outbreaks because BA1 struck first followed by the more transmissible BA2. But because New Zealand jumped straight to BA2, it may "act in our favour", Dr Bloomfield explained.
"You can see that even those jurisdictions that had initial quite big Omicron outbreaks, are getting a second one that seems to be associated with the BA2 sub-variant. There's a possibility we will miss that second big peak that other countries are seeing."
The Government is acknowledging the changing nature of the COVID-19 threat now that more than 96 percent of the eligible population is fully vaccinated and Omicron is less severe than Delta. COVID-19 cases, for example, now only have to isolate for a week and tourists will be welcomed back - without need to isolate - over the next few months.
Ardern also announced on Monday that Cabinet will next week consider "changes" to vaccine passes and mandates, as well as other COVID-19 measures like QR code scanning and the traffic lights settings.
"We've already given an indication, actually some time ago, that as we come off the peak of our Omicron wave, that mandates we will be looking to narrow, vaccine passes don't have the same use, and so we will be looking to remove those," Ardern said on Friday.
"We'll be making decisions on that over the coming week and looking to announce next week. We'll be looking to where we can feel confident that we've peaked and that we're coming away.
"In Auckland at the moment, we do believe that we are peaking, if not plateauing. We're looking for that to follow in our hospitalisations. But the indication that we've had from our modellers is that the end of March is the likeliest time and then we should be coming away."
Luxon has denied he was politicking by calling on the Government to change the COVID-19 rules when Ardern had already indicated plans to do so.
"We have our own thoughts about it and it's important we do because New Zealanders need to see that we're an alternative government-in-waiting," Luxon said on Friday.
"They don't get to see that unless we propose ideas and that's what we should be doing in Opposition."
He said the Government was too slow.
"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."
