The final report from the Royal Commission of Inquiry into New Zealand's Covid-19 response will be made public on March 10, the Government has announced.
The inquiry, announced in November 2024, is an expansion of the scope of the Royal Commission of Inquiry established by the Labour Government in 2022.
Its establishment was part of both the ACT-National and New Zealand First-National coalition agreements. Both parties had campaigned to expand the scope.
The commission of inquiry was tasked with examining Government decisions from February 2021 to October 2022, and covered topics such as vaccine safety and approvals, vaccine mandates, testing and tracing technology, and national and regional lockdowns.
The inquiry gathered evidence over 15 months, analysed thousands of documents, and interviewed a wide range of people – including former ministers and senior public servants. It also considered more than 31,000 submissions from the public and organisations.
“The inquiry is not simply about learning what the previous Government did wrong, it is about working out what we need to do right," Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden said.
"The social and financial costs of the pandemic response continue to be felt across the economy and society.
"Even today, New Zealanders are facing the consequences as they struggle with the cost of living and the debt disaster the previous Government left behind. We simply cannot afford to repeat the same mistakes again.”
The final report was delivered to the Governor-General, Dame Cindy Kiro, this morning.
It will be made public when it is presented to Parliament on March 10.
Health Minister Simeon Brown will then be tasked with the Government's response to its recommendations.
First report
The first report, made public in November 2024, said that in combination with the elimination strategy, vaccination was fundamental to the effectiveness of New Zealand's Covid-19 response.
It said "the use of compulsion was one of the most controversial aspects of the Covid-19 response" and that ministers involved in making these decisions weighed up the need to protect public health and individual freedoms and rights.
Testing, contact tracing and masking requirements were "important components" of the response, and the report said practical issues with their implementation "could be improved upon if similar requirements are deemed necessary in a future pandemic".
The first inquiry also found it was, based on information available to the Government in 2021, "reasonable" to introduce vaccine mandates for specific occupations such as border and health workers.
It said the requirements were "reassuring", but came with "significant negative impacts" including exacerbating workforce issues and shortages in some sectors, as well as "difficult social consequences" for those who did not choose to get vaccinated.
The alert level system was hailed in the first inquiry as a "world-leading and innovative communication and policy tool" that proved to be highly effective. Some shortcomings included non-health matters taking a back seat, a lack of long-term planning and a delay in exiting the elimination strategy
It found the Government was not well prepared for a pandemic, and said that while there were "pockets of pandemic preparedness", it "proved insufficient for an event of the scale, impact and duration" the Covid-19 pandemic turned out to be. It also found that New Zealand was not prepared for the border closures and MIQ.
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