Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield says the Government and Ministry of Health will be looking to take steps to ease restrictions on sporting crowd sizes, following a letter from the chief executives of New Zealand's Super Rugby teams.
With New Zealand at the red light setting of the COVID-19 response framework, crowd sizes at sporting events are restricted to a pittance of what would be allowed outside of the global pandemic.
At present, crowd sizes for sporting events are capped at separate pods of up to 100 people, adequately spaced across a given venue, resulting in well-below average turnouts for the opening four rounds of Super Rugby Pacific.
But while rugby has been restricted to the pods of 100, the Women's Cricket World Cup has been cleared first to allow 10 percent of a given stadium's capacity, before that was expanded to 20 percent for the White Ferns' match against Australia at the Basin Reserve on Sunday.
As a result, the chief executives of New Zealand's five teams - the Blues, Chiefs, Hurricanes, Crusaders and Highlanders - have written to Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Sport and Recreation Grant Robertson for clarification and simplifications over attendance numbers.
Newshub understands that the letter has been directed to the Ministry of Health. However, the Ministry of Health has confirmed Dr Bloomfield is yet to receive a copy from the Deputy Prime Minister.
And speaking on Tuesday, Dr Bloomfield concedes that while he has not seen the letter, the prospect of easing restrictions on other codes is on the agenda.
"We've obviously been supporting bigger crowds for the Women's Cricket World Cup on at the moment," Dr Bloomfield says.
"We will be looking really quickly at the opportunities to look at bigger crowds for Super Rugby, and other outdoor sporting events, again based on that information we know that outdoors is a much lower risk setting than indoors."
Dr Bloomfield adds the Cricket World Cup's standing as a global event resulted in a fast-tracking of restrictions being eased, but will move to do the same for other outdoor sporting events as early as possible.
"[We] just recognise the Women's Cricket World Cup is a very significant international sporting event too," he says.
"But we'll be looking quickly at the letter from the Super Rugby franchises, and other sporting codes including football as well that will be wanting to, I'm sure, do the same."
