New Zealand

Scrapping traffic light system gives 'certainty: Jacinda Ardern

September 13, 2022 10:08 am

NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is “absolutely confident” that scrapping the Covid-19 traffic light system is the right thing to do.

The traffic light system came to an end late on Monday night.

Restrictions have largely been removed. Mask requirements are now only applicable in health settings and household contacts of Covid-19 cases are no longer required to isolate. A seven-day isolation period for positive cases remains.

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Ardern told Breakfast she is confident the change comes at the right time.

“I feel absolutely confident, as does our Covid-19 minister who is an infectious diseases specialist,” she said. “What we’ve said is that we’ll now just keep with the two tools, masks and isolation. We may dial those up and down should we see increases in cases but what people can get back is certainty.”

Ardern added that the Government would not be making the change if they felt it would significantly contribute to the pressure on New Zealand’s health system.

She said keeping an isolation period of seven days for positive cases is an “important measure” in mitigating that strain, “and our seven days of isolation is actually quite similar to Australia’s five, because theirs is from the time you test positive and ours is from symptom onset”.

“The second thing I’d say is there continues to be pressure, generally, in our health system. We need to keep growing the workforce, we need to get the health reforms fully implemented so that we can use the scale of our national service to make sure that we’re working as efficiently as possible, and we will continue to do that.

“We do need to keep monitoring but what we’ve indicated is that, if we do see increases in cases, and there is that additional pressure, the things that we will turn to are masks and isolation periods.

“Those are the dials we’ll turn up and down, but we’re moving the traffic light system to the side because those are not tools that in those scenarios we will move back to.”

Ardern also announced on Monday that all remaining Government vaccine mandates will be dropped on September 26, including for health workers and overseas tourists.

When asked what her message would be to people affected by the mandates, Ardern said she knows that was a “very hard period for everyone, for those that they applied to, for others who had family members affected by them”.

“I know it’s been hard, but it did save lives.”