Prepare to bid farewell to vaccine passes and many workplace mandates - at least for now - but the next question is whether any regions are ready to have restrictions eased.
Red light restrictions, namely indoor gathering limits, ould be scrapped under orange. Photo: 123RF
Cabinet ministers will review the red settings today and with cases believed to have peaked in Auckland, it would have be at the front of queue for a move to orange.
Many changes have already been made because of the nature of Omicron - a different beast to Delta, the variant New Zealand faced when the traffic light system was put in place.
Which leaves the red light restrictions - namely indoor gathering limits - which would be scrapped under orange.
Business New Zealand chief executive Kirk Hope said there was a case to move Auckland to the lower setting.
He thinks there are "a lot of people who would be hopeful that Auckland at least, if not other parts of the country, can be put into orange".
As well as freeing up some businesses, he said it would signal a return to a more "normal" state of affairs.
"There are still people who are quite fearful, quite rightly - we've got, hundreds of thousands of cases and that's quite a different situation to where we have been before, where for long periods of time we had no cases at all, or very, very few cases," he said.
"So it is a big, mind shift people will have to go through, but it will make a difference, certainly for businesses, if we can get more people out and about."
Covid-19 modeller Michael Plank was urging caution, and for people to take just one step at a time.
"It's a good approach to not get rid of all our public health measures in one go, as some countries have done, because that does create a risk that you get a big rebound, and a second wave."
Shifting from red to orange in the traffic light system could be done regionally, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said. Graphic: NZ Government
Epidemiologist Michael Baker was also mindful of what was happening in other countries, like Australia, which was generally about two months ahead.
"They're now seeing a very big second wave, which in some cases is larger than the first wave, so we want to avoid having that same scenario in New Zealand."
One of the drivers internationally, he said, was relaxing controls too rapidly.
Baker was not convinced orange would provide "many barriers against transmission of the virus" and he would have "real concerns" about moving any part of the country to the lower setting.
More broadly, Baker said the traffic light framework was not fit for purpose, and what was needed was a system that sent "a very clear message about what is the level of risk at any one point in time".
"We want a consistent system where we don't change what a red light means frequently, and that the public knows and understands."
He also wanted sentinel, or random community, testing for a more accurate picture of infection levels, as was being done in Britain, and more widespread whole genome sequencing to pick up any new variants coming through the border.
Once Covid-19 cases surged into the thousands, the government started to use the number of hospitalisations as a measure of the broader outbreak.
That will be one of the key criteria considered today - there are about 690 people in hospital with Covid-19 on Sunday - down from a peak of just over 1000 nearly a fortnight ago.
New Zealand Faculty of the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine chair Kate Allan said as far as the Auckland metro hospitals go, they were overwhelmed - but that was happening way before Covid-19, and unless fundamental changes were made, it would continue even once the pandemic was under control.
"We're very concerned about influenza, we're very concerned about measles, we're very concerned about children who have been missing or their childhood immunisation in the resurgence of some of those infections," Dr Allan said.
"So there's a much bigger problem and Covid is little part of this giant problem, and very complex problem, and the healthcare system is at the centre of if."
The primary health care sector would bear the brunt of another spike in Covid cases, Dr Allan said, as most cases were managed in the community.
"And that's not because they've just had a bit of a mild illness, but they haven't been unwell enough to need hospital level care.
"So they may still feel pretty horrible and still need to spend time in bed, and what we would call mild, but maybe a patient would call moderate - but they can be managed at home."
Cabinet will decide today which, if any regions, can move to orange, with the announcement expected at 4pm.
