New Zealand is to remain at the Orange level of the traffic light system.

Response Minister Chris Hipkins said “with New Zealand expecting to see Omicron cases rise during the winter, the Orange setting remains appropriate for managing this stage of the outbreak.”

“While daily cases numbers have flattened nationally, they are again beginning to increase in the Northern region and hospitalisation rates have also increased slightly over the past month.”

“In addition, our latest COVID-19 modelling indicates that under current conditions, there is a likelihood of a secondary wave of cases appearing.”

“The next review of the traffic light settings will be in late June,” Chris Hipkins said.

Meanwhile, ACT’s Leader David Seymour said “the Government should just show us the green light and let us get on with our lives.”

“The Traffic Light system that currently exists by virtue of the COVID Response Act is totally redundant. The Government dismantled their own system to the point it has no reason to exist. It was introduced to control crowd limits, encourage vaccination and for contact tracing. None of these elements are in play anymore.”

“Today’s non-announcement was conveniently timed to coincide with the Prime Minister boarding a plane to the USA. Now we have to arbitrarily wait another month before common sense can prevail.”

“As has often been the with case Labour’s COVID response, it’s political theatre taking precedence over common sense.”

“These rules don’t make sense anymore but just constrain peoples’ everyday lives and make us a less attractive destination to tourists.”

“Why on earth would people want to come here if they thought they’d have to isolate for seven days after testing positive? Newsflash, they won’t.”

Seymour said the COVID Response Act is no longer necessary for New Zealand and the sooner we get rid of it the sooner we will bring some normality back.”