Health Minister Andrew Little has revealed the steps New Zealanders must take for their region to move to the Green traffic light.
It comes a day after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern confirmed Aotearoa would move to into the traffic light system from 11.59pm on Thursday.
Northland, Auckland, Taupō and Rotorua Lakes Districts, Kawerau, Whakatāne, Ōpōtiki Districts, Gisborne District, Wairoa District, Rangitīkei, Whanganui and Ruapehu Districts will move in at Red.
The rest of the North Island and the whole of the South Island will move in at the Orange setting.
Ardern confirmed that no region would begin in Green and that she expected it would remain that way for some time.
"Keep in mind the Auckland boundary only lifts in the middle of December, so we do expect the country will either be in Orange or Red settings through that period," she said.
However, on Tuesday morning, Little told Breakfast what needed to happen for regions to move down a level and into the Green setting.
"High vaccination rates at or above 90 per cent [regionally], evidence that the local health response is coping with the numbers [of cases] that are there, and also that people are responding to the rules of the traffic light system and are doing all they can to keep the infection under control," Little said.
"We're going to review it [the levels] every couple of weeks to see how it goes. We'd like everyone to be in Green as soon as possible but I think every way we've managed the virus since the onset of the virus last year we've taken a cautious approach and I think it has served us well and will continue to do that."
Meanwhile, Little said it was still too early to know whether the Omicron variant of Covid-19 was something to be concerned about, but said he was confident there were no cases of the new variant in New Zealand.
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