New Zealand will remain at Red Covid-19 traffic light setting.

Vaccine passes would no longer be required from midnight tonight, although businesses could continue using them if they wished.

Ministers will review these settings again next week. 

Government vaccine mandates for all sectors, except health and care workers, prison staff, and border workers will be removed from tonight.

Red means wearing a face mask in most indoor settings, limiting indoor capacity to 200, and if you catch COVID-19 – or someone you live with does – isolating for 7 days.

When asked why Auckland can’t move to orange when cases are falling, Ardern said while we’re seeing a decline in hospitalisations, it’s off a high base, the numbers are still relatively high, the pressure on our system is still there.

“We’ve always said that there is the possibility of moving regions to different levels at different times, but as we’ve said, Auckland has made significant progress but we do still have a relatively high hospitalisation rate.”