Restrictions on contacts of Covid cases will be loosened at midnight tonight in anticipation of a wave of thousands of cases of the Omicron variant sweeping through the country.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on Monday that the country would move to "phase 2" of its Omicron plan from 11.59pm on Tuesday.
Phase 2 reduces isolation periods for contacts from 10 days to seven, and means the focus of contact tracing will shift to "high-risk" exposure events.
Everyone else effectively has to do their own contact tracing. Cases are now likely to be notified by a text message, rather than a phone call.
Phase 2 also places a greater reliance on rapid antigen tests (RATS) to reduce the burden on the health service and the economy. Employees who are part of the "critical workforce" can get out of their isolation requirements if they produce a negative RAT test.
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'Fasten our seatbelts'
The Strategic Covid-19 Public Health Advisory Group chairman Sir David Skegg told RNZ he believed New Zealand was more prepared for the Omicron outbreak than any other country he could think of.
"We knew this day would come, experience from other countries has shown us that we can't beat Omicron in the way we beat the original virus and to a large extent Delta."
New Zealand had no choice but to move to phase 2 as its contact tracing system would start getting overwhelmed.
His greatest concern was that not enough people were boosted: "I'm amazed that there are more than 1 million New Zealanders who are eligible for the booster dose who have not yet taken up this opportunity. This is crazy."
So far only 53 people had died from Covid-19 so New Zealand had done "incredibly well", Skegg said.
"The next few months are going to be very challenging for this country. We are going to experience something like what those other countries have.
"I think we all need to fasten our seatbelts."
The queue at Te Whānau O Waipareira's Covid test station already stretches into the street this morning. Photo / Michael Craig
Skegg warned people were going to get sick and a considerable number of people would die, but it was also going to affect business, social life and education.
Skegg would be doing his best to avoid catching the virus especially because his wife was immunosuppressed, but "we still have to live normally to an extent - that's why we are all at risk".
The best we could do right now was for everyone to get boosted, he said.
The Government will let some people avoid PCR tests by allowing contacts in the critical workforce to get a RAT test. Photo / Michael Craig
Food and Grocery Council chief executive Katherine Rich said the Government couldn't have set-up a more bureaucratic system for businesses trying to access rapid antigen tests (RATS).
Under the new system, workers had to front up with at least six different pieces of paper - letters, IDs, order numbers and texts - which is why the council argued it would be better for these tests and the systems to be in the hands of businesses.
If larger businesses couldn't handle the tests themselves then the Government ran the risk of large number of workers who may be close contacts leaving their place of work and going right around the community to pick up these individual tests, she told AM.
"There's a much more efficient way of doing this."
Rich was pleased there had been a lot more honesty about how close contacts would be identified. For a long-time it had been the businesses had been identifying close contacts because they had waited "days and days" to hear from the Ministry of Health.
It just made sense for the businesses to do the testing and this was happening in Australia rather than having to have a collection point for them, she said.
"It would be much better if, as we thought, the tests would be dispatched to businesses so the test could be done there and then. It would be more efficient, it would be less costly for everyone and people can get back to work and keep those shelves full for New Zealanders."
With the move to phase 2 of the Omicron response, National Party leader Christopher Luxon told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking that rapid antigen tests should be available to every worker.
"Every worker should be able to have them and be able to do the test and work out if they can go to work, and more importantly if you want to go see your grandmother tonight you should be able to go down to the supermarket, do it and go off and see her."
On the supply of RATS he said if it were him making the calls, he'd approve all of the suppliers Australia has already approved.
"As a result, you'd have access to a whole commercial supply that you can get going with.
"If you don't have RATS and they're not available to everyone and you can't test to work we're going to end up with very long isolation periods."
On RATS being more accessible in other countries, he said the country could have been more prepared.
"The benefit we've had is that we get a first mover advantage because we're the last guys to get any development on Covid.
"The rest of the world is moving on and we can't get the basics like a RAT, in Singapore you go to a vending machine and get it and you've been able to do it for a year."
Bloomfield hopes NZ may not need phase 3
Director general of health Ashley Bloomfield held out hope that New Zealand might never move to "phase 3" of the plan - when there are a very large number of cases - if the current measures manage to stop case numbers from growing out of control.
"Phase 3 is not an inevitability. The objective through both phases 2 and 3 is to keep the curve as flat as possible," Bloomfield said.
"We know the cases will keep going up and we want the peak to be as low as possible, because that will be the key driver of disruption, both to our health service and to our critical services," he said.
Ardern said she anticipated phase 2 lasting as long as there were between "1000 and 5000 cases a day".
There were 981 new community cases reported on Monday in what Bloomfield called a "two-speed" outbreak. Auckland's outbreak recorded 768 cases, with the remaining 213 cases distributed around the rest of the country.
However, experts say the latest case numbers show the Omicron outbreak is accelerating but they're likely to be the tip of the iceberg.
"When we're at the steep part of the curve, the actual number of infections are much higher than what we're measuring," says University of Otago epidemiologist Michael Baker.
University of Auckland Associate Professor Siouxsie Wiles said the increase was expected and it was now on people to try to slow down transmission - by getting vaccinated, boosted, and wearing masks indoors.
"This many cases after a Sunday shows the exponential spread is well and truly on its way," she said.
Te Pūnaha Matatini complex systems researcher Dion O'Neale said while case numbers would rise dramatically in coming weeks, there was the possibility for cases to "double" faster than what we had previously seen.
He expected the country would record 1000 cases in the "next day or two".
In phase 2, the concept of a close contact would become even closer, meaning it would capture fewer people.
O'Neale said this was not because things were getting safer, "but because we think there is enough spread out there now".
Left unchanged, the close contact rules would start to affect critical supply chains as case numbers spiked and critical workers were forced to self-isolate at home.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Photo / Dean Purcell
National said the Government should expand access to RATs - opening up a wound for the Government which has only 7.2 million tests on hand at the moment, with another million arriving this week. The Ministry has "confirmed" 22 million will arrive by the end of the month.
National's Covid-19 spokesman Chris Bishop said the tests should be available to anyone who wants them", not just people covered by RAT testing schemes.
Rapid antigen tests should be available for people to pick up in pharmacies and supermarkets, just like they are in most other countries," Bishop said.
"They shouldn't just be available to those critical workers who have somehow been able to navigate the tedious bureaucratic system the Government has set up.
"Any individual who wants a test should be able to get one. We've been banging on about this for months, but it's never been more urgent," he said.
Act leader David Seymour said phase 1 of the Omicron plan was a placeholder which hid the fact the Government had no real Omicron plan.
"Today's announcement of reduced isolation is welcome – but shows what a waste of time stage one has been," Seymour said.
Cars queue for Covid-19 testing in Balmoral, Auckland, after the country yesterday recorded 981 new cases. Photo / Michael Craig
"The cost of failing to secure RATs after banning them, then selectively allowing them, then confiscating them is huge. Productive time will be lost as people who are negative have to keep isolating because they can't prove it, unable to work or see friends and family," he said.
Seymour suggested allowing New Zealanders to import the tests already approved in Australia, and allowing anyone to be released from isolation following a negative test.
The Government, which has been dogged by concerns it had inadequate supplies of RATs acknowledged that some of the restrictions on their use were intended to conserve supply.
"One of the things we have been discussing throughout the process of ensuring we have enough rapid antigen tests available [for] everyone who is symptomatic, every close contact, vulnerable members of our community, and our critical workforce," Ardern said.
"Beyond that, we do want to see the wider availability of rapid antigen tests, but we do need to ensure we have the supply to meet those needs and then you would see that wider availability," she said.
Bloomfield said Health officials were working on a new RAT strategy. He said this was partly constrained by supply of the tests, and partly by the phase of the pandemic that the country was in.
Yesterday's post-Cabinet press conference had reduced numbers, after a member of the press gallery produced a positive RAT result.
Press gallery staff were being trained in how to use RAT tests which had been given to them as part of Parliament's surveillance testing programme. One member produced a weak positive, and large swathes of the rest of the gallery were forced to stay away from the Prime Minister's press conference as a result.
The journalist who tested positive had gone to get a PCR test.
