Otago University epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker says New Zealand's new enemy under a move to Covid-19 Alert Level 2 will be "complacency".
Speaking this morning to TVNZ 1's Breakfast, Professor Baker said he thinks New Zealand is almost ready for a Covid-19 alert level of 2, but said the onus would now be on people to ensure they are taking personal responsibility for lowering the risk of virus transmission.
Watch the Prime Minister announce when NZ will move to Alert Level 2 on TVNZ 1 and 1news.co.nz from 4pm today.
"I think the big problem, as we know under level 3 and 4, we knew what we had to do - we basically stayed at home unless we had a good reason to go out," Professor Baker said.
"Level 2 - it's much more about individual responsibility, and people around the country and employers all doing the right thing all the time and I think that obviously makes it tougher.
"Hopefully people now know how the virus is transmitted and how they can stop transmission - it's basically in droplets that people breath out - so people need to keep assuming that everyone they meet is potentially infectious, and act accordingly.
"If all of us do that, I think we've got a good chance of eliminating this infection in New Zealand."
Professor Baker said that "complacency is the real enemy now.
"So we've just got to remember why we're doing this - it's not like overseas where they're going in and out of lockdown, in New Zealand we want to come out of lockdown, do it once, and do it really well."
Professor Baker was a co-author of a post last week which suggested that the Ministry of Health could be doing a better job of presenting Covid-19 numbers and statistics.
"Obviously there's a lot of data being looked at behind the scenes, and it's painting a picture that we are moving in the right direction," he said.
"We would just like to see the data presented in a way on the website that informs the whole public of New Zealand how we are progressing towards elimination.
"At the moment we tend to just see totals of cases in quite broad categories, so we've suggested that we have additional categories there just to see how we're going."
One of those categories could be for things like how many cases have been transmitted in healthcare settings, Professor Baker said, or for whether an infection was acquired overseas or within New Zealand.
He held up Taiwan as the gold standard, with zero cases over the past month, and said he was hopeful that Kiwis could remember the habits they've learned over the level 3 and 4 lockdown period and continue to exercise the same caution.
Professor Baker has also advocated for protective masks to be worn inside of all venues, and particularly on public transport.
"These are places where people are in quite close proximity and if you have a mask policy you could actually fill up all those rows that are going to be empty," he said.
"In Taiwan they've just passed a law requiring everybody to wear masks on public transport, even though they've had no cases for a month.
"This is a barrier that's really essential."
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