Covid-19 measures: Isolation period, vaccine passes may need to be stricter - modeller

By RNZ

Isolation may need to return to 10 days and vaccine passes may need to be expanded to include the booster shot, a modeller says.

The future of the country's Covid-19 restrictions will be revealed by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at 11am today.

Latest figures indicate the Covid-19 outbreak is past its peak in Auckland and is slowing down in the rest of the country.

But director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said yesterday that New Zealanders need to be prepared for further Omicron waves and new variants.

Te Pūnaha Matatini project lead Dr Dion O'Neale said the current framework was designed around reducing transmission with Delta, for which it gave good protection.

But that is not the case with Omicron, where three vaccine doses are needed to reduce transmission.

Mask-wearing, isolating and rapid antigen testing have also become key measures.

PCR tests are much more accurate, says a Covid modeller. Photo / File

Some of those measures may need to be stepped up, but there is room to relax in other areas, he told Morning Report.

Self-isolating has been reduced to seven days in the main to allow people to remain at work and it might be better to lengthen it to 10 days, O'Neale said.

"We'd hope that some of those protections that we took off as we moved up through our case numbers, as it becomes effective for them to come back into play again that we put them back on and so that would mean probably pushing that isolation period back out to 10 days or using a negative test to return [to work]."

Luxon disagrees

National Party leader Christopher Luxon told Morning Report other countries were working within five to seven days' isolation.

"We are getting to a place in New Zealand now where we are trying to get back to some sense of normalcy.

"Omicron is a different risk and as a result we now need to start removing the restrictions."

From a health risk point of view, the US health protection agency CDC is recommending five days as an isolation period, he said.

"Let's be a little bit practical about it, if it's five versus seven - those two days make a difference."

O'Neale also advocated use of the more reliable PCR tests again.

He said it might be "incredibly unpopular", but vaccine passes could be expanded to include the booster dose although it was not the only approach.

"If people aren't willing to do that then we want to take some other preventative option instead to keep people safe."

Asked about the prospect of the government ditching vaccine passes and increasing the sizes of gatherings, O'Neale said it might send a false message to people that things are safe "which is absolutely not the case".

"We're still in a situation with very high infection numbers out there."

Even if case numbers dropped from yesterday's 20,000 to 5000, people need to remain cautious about the infection risk.

"What we'd hope is if people are still recognising that risk, you can remove that two-dose vaccine pass limit without having a huge change if people are remaining cautious and other measures are put in place to try and mitigate some of that infection risk."

However, Luxon said scanning and vaccine passes should be scrapped, and from April 13 mandates should start being withdrawn and the traffic light framework should be dropped altogether.

"It's not going to be sensible when you've got Australians coming over and you're opening up the country to tourists and they don't have vaccine passes that enable them to get in and out of restaurants or cafes."

Regular rapid antigen tests and mask use in indoor settings will be needed for a period of time, he said.