New Zealand Government announces end of vaccine passes and return of crowds to outdoor events

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced changes to the country’s COVID-19 vaccine and mandates rules that will see the scrapping of attendance limits for outdoor events from this weekend.

Announced today, the major loosening of the country’s tough COVID-19 restrictions follows high vaccination rates across the nation, better data to identify which environments are high risk, and modelling that suggests New Zealand’s Omicron outbreak will peak in early April.

With New Zealand’s borders to open vaccinated travellers from next month, Prime Minister Ardern noted “we’ve been signalling for some time that when we come off the peak, that would be the time to be able to ease the use of things like vaccine passes and mandates.”

The changes for outdoor event include scrapping all gathering limits in outdoor settings and removing requirements for people to use the COVID-19 tracer app to scan in when entering businesses.

The changes also allow hospitality and other venues to increase their indoor gathering limit from 100 to 200 from Friday.

Under the changes to New Zealand’s red light traffic settings, outdoor face mask requirements are to be removed, while vaccine passes will no longer be required to be used from 11.59pm on 4th April.

Explaining the move, Prime Minister Ardern added “to date we’ve had more than 500,000 reported cases of COVID-19 and expert modellers say there have probably been 1.7 million actual infections.

“That figure, coupled with 95% of New Zealanders being fully vaccinated, means we now have a high level of collective immunity. New Zealanders have worked incredibly hard to get through this pandemic and as a result of those efforts we are now in a position to move forward and change the way we do things.”

The changes mean that the ongoing Women’s Cricket World Cup will be able to put more tickets on sale for the remainder of the tournament. It will cover weekend group matches including New Zealand v Pakistan, England v Bangladesh and India v South Africa, plus the semi-finals and final on 3rd April at Hagley Oval in Christchurch.

Welcoming the changes, Women’s Cricket World Cup Chief Executive, Andrea Nelson commented “we had sold out what we had available under the previous restrictions so it’s great to lift capacity and meet the demand which I know will be high.”

For domestic sport, the ongoing inaugural Super Rugby Pacific season will be able to move to full capacity.

Two matches are scheduled on Saturday after the gathering restrictions lift - Highlanders against Blues at Forsyth Barr Stadium  in Dunedin, and Chiefs against Crusaders in Hamilton while the NRL’s Warriors can now play their home games at Auckland’s Mt Smart Stadium.

COVID-19 travel restrictions between Australia and New Zealand had forced the Warriors to play their ‘home’ games during the 2020 and 2021 seasons at Central Coast Stadium.

Image: Super Rugby fans at Auckland's Eden Park after New Zealand's first post-COVID reopening in 2020.