Health Minister Chris Hipkins says wearing a face covering on public transport is the right thing do and will help keep New Zealanders safe from COVID-19. From Monday is compulsory for everyone aged 12 and over to wear a face covering on public transport and planes under Alert Level 2 and above, with certain exemptions for health, disability and practicality reasons.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!“The advice from health officials is clear – the use of face coverings can reduce the risk of people spreading COVID-19, particularly where it is hard to maintain physical distance from others. Masks and face coverings do not replace physical distancing – they complement other public health measures. Today I can also confirm that we will release a further three million masks for national distribution over the coming days as a one-off boost to immediate supply. This will be distributed among iwi, social services groups and community foodbanks in centres and regions where there is public transport,” said the Minister.
Not wearing a face covering on public transport will become an offence, punishable by a $300 infringement notice or a fine of up to a $1000 imposed by the courts. Enforcement of the rules will be light touch – starting with engagement, encouragement and education.
– TIN Bureau
NZ COVID Tracer app hits 2 million users
The NZ COVID Tracer app reached a significant milestone on Tuesday, recording over two million registered users – half of NZ’s population aged 15 and over. There have been an average of more than 1.7 million scans per day over the last week.
Progress on COVID-19 contact tracing
The final report of the Contact Tracing Assurance Committee (CTAC), led by Sir Brian Roche, has recognised progress made on New Zealand’s COVID-19 contact tracing systems. The Committee was tasked with reviewing progress against the recommendations of an earlier, Verrall, report. “The report concludes that New Zealand is now in an increasingly strong position, with an improved contact tracing regime,” Health Minister Chris Hipkins said.
“Work-ons in the report included scenario planning and system stress-testing, which the Ministry was in the final stages of planning until overtaken by real-life events in Auckland. More than two weeks on from the Auckland outbreak, contact tracing continues to be effective. As of yesterday, teams had identified 2,422 close contacts of cases, of which 2,368 had been moved into isolation. That’s a high strike rate, and while the figures vary day to day, the teams are consistently performing around the benchmark of 80% of close contacts identified and contacted in 48 hours. And there are now about 1500 people using the National Contact Tracing centre for the purpose of supporting contact tracing. This excludes management and supervisory roles,” Hipkins said.
Another major recommendation was to encourage the role of technology to support contact tracing. Trials are also in train for a new Bluetooth COVID card and a smartphone-based Bluetooth function.