Claire Trevett: PM bids a relieved farewell to Covid-19 rules

A relieved Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announces the end of the traffic light system with Covid-19 Response Minister Ayesha Verrall. Photo / Mark Mitchell

So it is goodbye to all of that for Covid-19 rules – or so the Prime Minister will hope after her announcement that the traffic light system was gone and along with it, most mask mandates and all vaccine mandates.

Ardern has largely steered away from fronting Covid-19 announcements in the past year – apart from the very big ones.

The dismantling of all those earlier big decisions is indeed a big one.

Ardern described the scrapping of the rules as a milestone after 927 days of varying levels of Covid-19 restrictions.

"Finally, rather than feeling that Covid dictates what happens to us, our lives, and our futures, we take back control."

That step of "taking back control" has required the Government to give up control.

A relieved Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announces the end of the traffic light system with Covid-19 Response Minister Ayesha Verrall. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Ardern pointed to a summer ahead in which there was now certainty it would be free of sudden changes in the rules and regulations impeding life.

She spoke about it as if it was forever, as if Covid-19 was over.

The concern about what lies ahead is for tomorrow. Monday's announcement was one Ardern would have been very relieved to deliver.

The PM spoke of the toll Covid-19 had taken in the past three years and said she hoped the scrapping of rules and uncertainty would mean summer would be a time over which the "Covid-anxiety" could heal.

She will also be hoping it will be a time over which her own popularity can heal - battered by those rules as they dragged into the third year.

She said those rules had done what they needed to do to save lives - but she will not be sorry to give away the powers she has wielded.

She will also be hoping like hell that she does not have to reclaim them.

The only vestiges that now remain are mask requirements in health settings, such as hospitals and clinics, and in aged care.

The rest are at Level Decide for Yourself. It will be left to workplaces and organisations to decide for themselves whether to require mask-wearing or vaccinations among their staff.

Parliament's Speaker Adrian Rurawhe was quick to move to remove the mask rules that have applied around Parliament up until now.

People who desperately want to avoid Covid-19 – whether for health reasons or to try to avoid getting it ahead of a big event or holiday – can take precautions such as mask-wearing.

Ardern said it would bring certainty that nothing would change. They were very unequivocal statements from the same Ardern who spent the past 927 days warning that Covid-19 was "tricky" and new variants could outwit us all and force the Government to take further steps.

Ardern might well have been able to control how we respond to Covid-19, but she cannot control Covid-19 itself.

So the Government has not quite relinquished its ability to control.

In a tacit acknowledgement of that, the Government ultimately decided to keep in place the laws and Covid-19 notices that allow it to put in place the "extraordinary measures" Ardern said were now a thing of the past. Those will eventually have to be ditched or replaced with a permanent legal framework.

For the time being, those are needed to keep isolation periods and the limited mask mandates that still apply in place. Cabinet had decided not to wind them back in the wider health and aged-care sectors.

But it will also allow the Government to more easily reintroduce measures if needed in future – something Covid-19 Response Minister Ayesha Verrall acknowledged when saying the Government could ramp up and ramp down requirements such as masking if needed.

A plan to deal with new variants is being developed, but there is confidence it will not require the same stringent measures as in the past.

Act thought it didn't go far enough, the Green Party thought it went too far – that the Government had "given up on Covid." It probably got it right.