December 8, 2023

COVID-19 will spread more if Govt scraps remaining restrictions, Hipkins warns

Chris Hipkins spoke to Melissa Chan-Green.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins warns COVID-19 will spread more around New Zealand and will further impact the health system if the Government scraps the remaining restrictions in place.

Speaking to AM for his weekly interview, Hipkins said the Government would decide on Tuesday whether or not to ditch the mandatory seven-day isolation period.

“It’s always a finely balanced set of decisions,” he told host Melissa Chan-Green.

“On the isolation period, we’ve got to weigh up a number of things; we’ve got to weigh up the potential impact on case numbers, [and] we also do weigh up the impact on employment and on the labour market.

“One of the challenges here is if you have to isolate, then obviously you can’t go to work – that has a labour market implication. But on the other hand, if you go to work with COVID-19 and you give it to a whole lot of people, that can also have a labour market implication.”

Watch the full video for more.

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