New Zealand's government will lift all remaining COVID-19 requirements from midnight Tuesday, bringing an end to some of the toughest COVID-19 pandemic rules in the world more than three years after they were put in place.
Minister of Health Ayesha Verrall said in a statement on Monday that from Tuesday people will no longer have to wear a face mask in health care facilities or isolate for seven days after contracting the virus.
“While our case numbers will continue to fluctuate, we have not seen the dramatic peaks that characterized COVID-19 rates last year. This, paired with the population’s immunity levels, means Cabinet and I am advised we’re positioned to safely remove the remaining COVID-19 requirements,” Verrall said.
Most of the restrictions were removed last year as vaccination rates reached high levels and the country’s hospitals successfully navigated a winter without being overwhelmed.
The decision to remove the requirements comes just two months out from a closely contested election.
While the New Zealand government’s handling of the pandemic was globally recognized for keeping infection and death rates at low levels, domestically it faced criticism for the extended lockdowns, school closures and closed borders.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said the formal end of restrictions was a “significant milestone.”
“I believe that New Zealanders can be enormously proud of what we achieved together. We stayed home, we made sacrifices, we got vaccinated and there is absolutely no question that we saved lives,” he told his weekly press conference.
While no longer mandatory, the Minister of Health still recommends that people stay home for five days if you’re unwell or have tested positive.
© Thomson Reuters 2023.
37 Comments
diagonalslip
now there's a coincidence! （⌒▽⌒）
winston
Sounds about right
As new Zealand was one of the last to be affected /infected
divinda
Being required to wear face masks at health care facilities in Japan is still the norm.
Kaowaiinekochanknaw
NZ would be an absolutely horrible place to live nowadays due to their government policies and overreach.
Sad
Jimizo
Sounds a bit hysterical.
New Zealand is always ranked very high in terms of being a fine place to live.
Fighto!
Curious take.
Through a very large chunk of the covid years, stadia, pubs and restaurants in NZ were rocking - while people elsewhere faced restructuons and walked around in masks.
The nation is inundated with Visa applications to move there. They must have something right in NZ.
Antiquesaving
What immunity levels is that?
My daughter was fully vaccinated and got Covid not once but twice now!
So I would like to know what they mean by immunity levels!
Jay
New Zealanders seem largely unaware of just how damaging their government's draconian, hostage-style measures were to the once-positive international reputation of their country.
The reality is, the New Zealand government, and others, who were aggressively pro-Covid vaccination and extreme regulations - without any scientific evidence of efficacy and, more importantly, safety - are on the wrong side of history.
That will be their legacy, whether they like it or not.
virusrex
People vaccinated against polio do (did) get the infection, even the fever (same with many other vaccine preventable diseases), what is greatly reduced thanks to the immunity are the worst complications of the disease, reducing the risk to levels comparable with the rest of the common infections for which vaccines are not so necessary.
According to what respected institution of medicine or science?
If your claim were true it would be easy to find out international public health authorities, universities, epidemiological institutes, etc. etc. around the world echoing this claim, right?
fxgai
That sounds like a good thing, and it is…
But by the same logic - cars are dangerous. Banning people from driving or owning them would save lives.
Banning tobacco smoking too.
There is the problem - whether to take the risk or not, is (should be) up to individual people living their own lives, independently.
carpslidy
I will never forgive labour for miq
Antiquesaving
Actually is it?
The only reason New Zealand population has increased is because it increased the number of immigrants to the country to offset the exedus of long term New Zealanders.
New Zealand saw another increase in people leaving the country again in 2022 and now in 2023 and was only able to get an increase by increasing immigration to a level above the number of those leaving.
As for those going to New Zealand, they are people that cannot get into Australia or some other western country.
My guess is once they get citizenship they will do like many and take advantage of the new immigration rules in Australia to eventually move there.
Despite the increase in population due to and increase in immigration New Zealand had a net loss of 23,500 New Zealand citizens as of March 2023
virusrex
This argument makes no sense when the risk also affect others. According to this flawed arguments people should be left to drink and drive freely, right?
The measures in place to control a pandemic are used to reduce the risk in general to the population, the same applies to all the examples you used. Driving in general is allowed because it saves more lives than what it takes, but people are required to be licensed, wear seat belts, etc. Smoking the same with restrictions put in place so smokers do not increase the risk for others with their personal decision.
Jay
Let's start with your boyfriend, head of the JCHCO, Shigeru Omi. Just weeks ago, he was advocating for vaccination of the elderly and those with severe comorbidities. The New Zealand government, on the other hand, effectively enforced a blanket, one-size-fits all vaccination mandate for the entire population, regardless of age and health status.
That will be their legacy, and your stubborn refusal to acknowledge any scientific evidence from the last 18 months will be yours.
Jimizo
I remember the non-New Zealanders getting hysterical about Ardern.
I don’t think they’d be any use to New Zealand as citizens. I can’t imagine they’d be big-spending tourists either.
No great loss.
Antiquesaving
Nice try!
Polio vaccine has a 99% to 100% efficacy with and extremely low Breakthrough rate of not even 1% while the latest data shows a breakthrough rate over 19% amongst the fully vaccinated.
Polio was choice of an example.
Japan is a paradox
At least forgive them for potentially saving you and your loved ones (especially the elderly) lives, then.
Japan is a paradox
NZer here. Damaging how? I have not seen any 'damage'. Is it some kind of covert damage? :)
Jay
Ardern's Covid response involved shutting out her own country’s citizens, locking down those inside her borders, and crippling those who declined to get vaccinated.
Where was Ardern's famous empathy when she was dealing with those vaccine "dissenters" who foresaw what is now recognized as scientific fact?
Ardern leant heavily on the (wrong) assumption that the vaccines, once they arrived, would severely curtail community transmission. People were told to comply or, in the words of her successor Hipkins, they would be hunted down.
I know quite a few rational-thinking Kiwis who were more than disgusted with their ulta-progressive Establishment Left government over their handling of this.
Japan is a paradox
Pretty sure the evidence for using vaccines was very strong. You'd have to be well into fake conspiracy theories and made-up research to believe otherwise. What's safer - a well-researched an tested vaccine designed to protect people's lives, or a deadly virus that has so far killed 6 million people worldwide and still rising that is difficult to control and may mutate into something more deadly without warning?
Antiquesaving
The drunk driving strawman again.
I agree with you when this all started, I believed the supposed facts and data.
Now we are finding out about massive corners cut and safety measures waved, we are finding out the death data had been overly exaggerate in the USA, Canada, UK etc...
I was in fair health got both the vaccine shots as did my brother back home fully confident we were doing the right thing.
2 weeks after my brother got his second shot he suffered a serious heart attack, I got my second vaccine 2 weeks after my brother and guess what, 2 weeks later I also had a massive heart attack and developed an aneurysm.
Funny coincidence, right?
But here is another coincidence,y cardiologist in Japan and my brother's in Canada both said not to get our covid booster shots, I Wonder why ?
Jay
2021 called. They want their embarrassingly outdated "information" back.
And those "conspiracy theory" claims, well, haven't they just aged like milk.
Antiquesaving
Well if you don't consider a net loss of over 23,000 citizens that left the country and a reliance on increasing immigration to maintain the population, then OK no damage.
Fighto!
Out of curiosity, what was your BMI at the time? Your lifestyle? Diet? Exercise (or lack of)? Family history of heart issues?
One or two events is not statistically significant.
Those with significant existing or recent health issues/events cannot be vaccinated for almost anything. That is likely why the specialist has advised as such.
Seems you are desperate to find some "conspiracy" where nothing exists.
Antiquesaving
I agree "a well researched and tested vaccine"!
But that was not what we got and the facts are not coming out!
We got a rushed vaccine, with very little actual testing and many corners cut.
This is not conspiracy thes are facts now being investigated in multiple countries.
In the same way the number of deaths is now being reviewed in most countries because of false attributing deaths to covid that were not.
Again not some crazy conspiracy theory but what is actually being done in countries like the UK, Canada and the USA.
Wick's pencil
Those institutions of medicine or science have lost a tremendous amount of respect lately.
Yes, and the polio vaccine isn't something that needs to be taken every few months.
Antiquesaving
Seriously you are going to try that?
Coincidence 2 weeks and 2 weeks, Ok!
I am not overweight nor is my brother, I don't eat much meat, no high blood pressure, no cardiac problems I do have lung damage from an previous incident but my brother was in very good health by any standard.
I had my annual checkup in Japan with zero issues.
Would you like my blood type also?
Go back read my history, I was a strong advocate for getting the vaccine.
I am not some conspiracy nut case.
I am now reading government reports on skewed data by the vaccine makers, test data that was ignored, knowingly false claims as the the efficiency, etc.. not some fly by night website but actual government reports put out in Canada the USA and UK.
Japan is a paradox
That was a very early myth debunked well and truly if you care to do a little reading:
Rushed in the sense that there was an obvious urgency since hundreds were dying every day, but never rushed at the cost of safety and efficacy. They just used far more money, facilities and researchers than they usually do for vaccines. The methods were as rigorous as any previous vaccines that you and your children took.
Antiquesaving
Not even the the same league, not even the same game.
Under any other circumstances these vaccines would never have been approved, and remember 4 western vaccines and one J&J was pulled, AZ was also pulled them restricted and not even poor countries want it .
But go ahead tells us how well tested they all were!
Alongfortheride
And doing the most damage to a countries economy in the world!
fxgai
@wallace
So you think driving cars should be banned?
No need to divert by bringing drink driving into it.
Just plain old driving, after drinking nothing but water or tea.
Or swimming in the river or sea.
Banning it would save lives, right?
Of course this would be crazy. Yet that’s the route taken with coronas
virusrex
Welcome to the purpose of vaccines, getting the population immunized so the risk is reduced to background levels, something that applies differently for every population. This is still the opposite of what you claimed in your comment.
But not for preventing even high fevers just poliomyelitis and death, that efficacy is comparable with the effect of the covid vaccines, and of course still completely defeats your misrepresentation of what immunity means.
Without a time machine there were only two options, undercount or overcount, with the first option being the hugely more disastrous one. You are not talking about a re-emergence of something already well described but something that happened globally for the first time. Pretending all was perfectly understood at the moment to any excess is unjustified is not rational. To make your point you need to prove two things, one is that it was realisticially possible to accurately measure the costs of the disease under the different options for control available, the second that this meant the cost of the measures surpassed those evaluations.
Without those two conditions your argument is only that a new disease not well understood required also not well characterized measures to prevent the worst possible scenario.
Covid can still be an important factor in a death even if not the only one, that means that deaths produced by previous diseases can still be importantly attributed to covid when the patient was expected to live with his condition for decades. That is very different from saying the deaths were not related to covid.
Your N=2 anecdotal uncontrolled study is not enough to refute the data from literally billions of doses that demonstrate the risk for the health and life is much more important for unvaccinated people than for vaccinated ones. The same as the person that say both of his grandparents smoked until 100 years old so tobacco must not be that bad.
You still have not provided any reference where any institution say this information is outdated, it remains perfectly valid.
So all of them, in every country of the world, are all wrong because you want to believe differently? that is not a rational position to take.
Welcome to the realities of different pathogens requiring different schedules to reach immunity, with both vaccines achieve without problems.
wallace
fxgai
@wallace
Can you explain I didn't post a single comment so I have no idea what you are talking about.
virusrex
How are the examples you bring elevating the risk for others? that is the justification given for the still valid example. The same as why it is no longer allowed to smoke everywhere or for people working in food preparation to have bad hygiene.
virusrex
The clinical trials were on the same chronological scale as vaccines previously approved, and the data from billions of vaccination do not contradict in any way the findings of the trials.
This means that yes, the trials were enough for vaccine approval since it was already done before the pandemic.
Japan is a paradox
Says who? :)
Japan is a paradox
lol you neglected to look at the state of NZ's economy after COVID, didn't you.