Getting as many people vaccinated as possible is the "number one thing" to get New Zealand out of lockdowns, Judith Collins says.
The National Party leader told Breakfast she felt the country needed "a better roadmap out of Covid," but said getting vaccinated against the virus was still key opening the country up to the rest of the world.
"I am very pleased that we’re getting more people vaccinated at the moment and I’m heartened to hear that we’re going to have another announcement at some stage about more vaccine coming into the country.
"The number one thing has to be to get as many people vaccinated as we can and then to make sure that we have real plans in place for when other variants come through."
However, Collins said the Government knew Delta was coming as it showed up in MIQ in April and it should have had better plans in place for businesses on how to navigate "different lockdowns".
She said rapid antigen and saliva testing would "really help the country's response" and wanted the Government to step up on those and said it should be "more proactive" about organising vaccine boosters.
"Let’s see what we can do better when we have more people vaccinated and that’s really important," Collins said.
"We can’t be shut off from the world as a hermit kingdom forever."
Appearing after Collins, Health Minister Andrew Little remarked the recent surge in demand for vaccines was "good" and added things were "coming together very steadily" around securing more doses.
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