The Government will re-evaluate New Zealand's isolation rules and Covid settings in a couple of weeks' time, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says.
There's increasing support for changes to New Zealand's isolation rules, that'd see some people with Covid-19 only stay home for five days.
READ MORE: Could NZ's default Covid isolation period be shortened?
Auckland University's Covid-19 Modelling Aotearoa group has released new findings that a "test to release" policy would help reduce transmission, as it'd help uncover a small number of people who need to isolate for up to 10 days.
"What we've been looking at is whether there's a better option than this blanket 7 day isolation period," lead report author Emily Harvey said.
"The thing is, we know a quarter of people will still be infectious at those seven days, whereas, conversely a whole bunch of people stop being infectious before that point and so there's a few extra days of isolation they maybe don't need to be doing."
At Monday's post-Cabinet media conference, Ardern said the Government would continue to listen to public health advice.
"If you drop it [isolation periods] from seven to five you are accepting that you will have greater infections off the back of that. There seems to be a pretty wide consensus now that if you cut it to five there will be infectious people released before they no longer pose a risk to others," Ardern said.
"That’s why we take public health advice on those decisions. We’ll review all those settings every time we come around to a new review and that’s when I take a look at everything from masks to isolation periods."
New Zealand moved to the Orange level of the traffic light system in mid-April.
The traffic light system replaced the alert level system in December last year. It was revised in mid-March.
The prime minister said the next review is set to take place in a couple of weeks time as the country heads into spring.
"We'll have a look and make sure they're fit for purpose and make sense for the environment going forward."
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