‘We don’t prepare well’ — Hipkins asks Kiwis to play their part to prevent another Covid-19 community outbreak

January 18, 2021

The Covid-19 Response Minister says Kiwis need to play their part to prevent a large Covid-19 outbreak.

Chris Hipkins says while Government “machinery” is in place in the event of another Covid-19 community outbreak, Kiwis need to play their part too. 

The Covid-19 Response Minister told TVNZ1's Breakfast Kiwis were getting complacent. It comes as numbers of QR code scans continue to drop. 

At its peak in September, QR code scans were more than 2 million a day. In the past month, daily scans hover around 400,000 to 500,000. Data provided to 1 NEWS by the Ministry of Health also revealed only about 22 per cent of registered users have turned on the Covid Tracer app's Bluetooth functionality. 

“We’re doing everything we can,” Hipkins said of the measures in place that were trying to stop another large community outbreak. 

He said the Government had introduced testing for travellers from most destinations on arrival and pre-departure testing for people coming from the UK and the US over the summer.

All those except people arriving from Australia, some Pacific Island and Antarctic are facing further requirements.

“The machinery is prepared … New Zelanders as a people, the ‘we collective’, we respond well but we don’t necessarily prepare well.

“And so things like scanning the QR code — if we’re doing that more often, if we’re preparing more, then we probably need to respond less often.”

Hipkins said the Government is also continually improving managed isolation and quarantine processes in response to new, more contagious variants of Covid-19. 

“We’ve now got a regular cycle of those [reviews] happening. They have been roughly every two months.”

He said the Government had been implementing recommendations from those reviews. 

SHARE ME

More Stories