Ardern said her view since that had been that they needed to leave, regardless of police enforcement action, "But you can see from the numbers involved, that [police] are working very hard to clear those who remain."
She said the aftermath would include checking whether Parliament's own security was sufficient - but she would be concerned about anything that felt as if it was distancing Parliament from the public.
She held her verdict on the Speaker's proposal of a fence around Parliament. She did not know how much the protest and the Police action had cost the public.
On Ukraine, she said New Zealand's contribution would be in the humanitarian area rather than sending military equipment or weapons to Ukraine.
There were no developments on whether the Russian ambassador would be expelled, but "that option remains on the table".
Earlier, Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins announced a record 405 people in hospital with Covid-19. Of those, 10 are in ICU or HDU across New Zealand.
While case numbers continued to grow, the key metric health officials were focusing on was those that needed high levels of care such as hospitalisation.
The message to all New Zealanders was that high rights of vaccination were making a difference in how New Zealand was weathering the outbreak, Hipkins said.
Of the 405 people in hospital, five are in Northland, 56 in North Shore, 142 in Middlemore, 108 in Auckland, 37 in Waikato, 12 in Bay of Plenty, five in Rotorua: three in Tairawhiti, one in Hawke's Bay, four in Taranaki, two in MidCentral, two in Hutt Valley, 11 in Capital and Coast, six in Nelson Marlborough, 10 in Canterbury and one in Southern DHB.
The average age of those currently in hospital is 52.
Of those in hospital in the Northern region, 14.7 per cent are unvaccinated or not eligible, 2.4 per cent were partially vaccinated, 47.3 per cent were double vaccinated and 19.4 per cent were boosted. The vaccination status of 15.9 per cent of cases is unknown.
The new community cases are in Northland (382), Auckland (13,231), Waikato (2,139), Bay of Plenty (1,270), Lakes (415), Hawke's Bay (273), MidCentral (367), Whanganui (56), Taranaki (261), Tairāwhiti (137), Wairarapa (91), Capital and Coast (1,115), Hutt Valley (473), Nelson Marlborough (272), Canterbury (1,033), South Canterbury (36), Southern (578), West Coast (15). The location of eight are unknown.
Today's new cases bring the total number of confirmed cases in the outbreak to 142,321.
With 123,836 active community cases it means that 2.4 per cent of the New Zealand population are active cases.
All of the DHBs had now had 90 per cent uptake of the first dose of the vaccination.
A significant milestone had also been met with 60 per cent of eligible Māori now boosted.
More than 80 per cent of today's 22,152 community cases were detected by a Rapid Antigen Tests.
In the past seven days 7.7 million RAT tests have been given out.
Access to RATs continued to progress across the country, Hipkins said.
Hipkins urged people to be patient while trying to access tests, and said more sites were being stood up.
There was no need to stock up on rapid antigen tests and tests were "literally arriving all the time".
"The older your tests are the less accurate they are so we don't want people stockpiling," Hipkins said.
St Johns and Healthline had been reporting people using their services with "relatively mild symptoms", Hipkins said.
If people had mild symptoms, the advice was to stay home and ensure those services were left free for those that needed them.
For many people, with New Zealand's high rates of vaccinations, getting Covid-19 will be like getting the cold or the flu, Hipkins said.
New Zealand had a very low mortality rate and that was thanks to the people who had worked at our border.
Working at the border, in MIQ, had taken a toll on those workers.
For school-organised activities, vaccinations were not required for children, Hipkins said.
"We want to be clear that those kids participating in activities organised by the school don't need to be vaccinated," Hipkins said.
Hipkins said he didn't expect the rules to be interpreted as narrowly as they would've been - on the vaccination requirements for school-based activities.
"We will make some changes to make that really clear," he said.
My advice to parents is to stay calm, Hipkins said, and to seek out testing if they did develop symptoms.
On hospitals becoming overwhelmed, Hipkins said the slower the build-up the more time hospitals had to respond.
A sudden spike would be more challenging, he said.
"Looking at the modelling and drawing on international experience, we are seeing very low rates of ICU and people requiring room ventilation, which was different from previous variants," Hipkins said.
The outbreak would put the hospital system under pressure and it would be challenging over the next four to six weeks for hospitals, Hipkins said.
Hipkins added that a "very small fraction" of the occupancy in ICU and hospitals were Covid cases.
Hipkins said he wanted to ensure the roll-out of RATs was as smooth as possible.
Hipkins said on the testing overestimation issue, there would be plenty of time for a review in due course - but in the meantime, the focus had to be on the here and now.
If the reviews start to prevent work that is happening here and now, then they could do more damage, Hipkins said.
On MIQ wrapping up, Hipkins said people currently in MIQ would be released when the country they were aligned with no longer had to isolate.
"We are winding the system down. We have to make sure we are doing things that don't create perverse incentives."
Hipkins said the decision to wrap up MIQ was based on public health advice - rather than the pressure the system was under.
For people that were in MIQ at the moment, that had come in from anywhere other than Australia, Hipkins said people would be released at the same time as the border reopened.
"Vaccination may well put us on the track where we see a steeper drop off of case numbers after the peak but there was a lot of unknown and it was crystal ball gazing," Hipkins said.
On Bloomfield apologising yesterday, Hipkins said he added his regret and apology on the matter.
On case number rising in Wellington, Hipkins' message to the protesters was that Covid-19 was real and that it should surely be "pause for thought" when their friends standing next to them get the virus.
His message to protesters was to go home now.
The Ministry of Health's guidance had helped get New Zealand to the point of its favourable results compared to other countries.
On reports that people had tested positive for Covid and returned to the protest, he said to those people to go home, isolate and to take it seriously.
Vaccine passes expire in June, there had been no decision on the future of what those would be and public health measures and mandates would only be in place for as long as there is strong justification for them, he said.
Hipkins said the Ministry of Health had been under an enormous amount of pressure and highly scrutinised.
On testing capacity and related procurement decisions, Hipkins said it was a commercially sensitive area.
On the Allied health workers strike amid Omicron, Hipkins said it would not be good but the health system would have to adapt.
Yesterday there were nearly 20,000 recorded new cases, though Bloomfield conceded the number of active cases - just shy of 100,000 yesterday - may only be a third or a half of the actual infections across the country.
There were 373 patients in hospitals with Covid-19 and nine in ICU, while hospitals were at 80 per cent occupancy and ICUs at 57 per cent occupancy.
Middlemore Hospital staffing levels were down 15 to 20 per cent, due to people either having Covid-19 or looking after other who'd tested positive.
Public health experts say that the peak will hit Auckland first, perhaps within two weeks, and then the rest of the country perhaps a week later.
Yesterday Bloomfield apologised to the 32,000-odd people waiting five days or more for the results of their PCR test.
He urged those awaiting results to undertake a rapid antigen test, and gave assurances that the tests will still be processed; 9000 had been sent to Australia over the weekend.
Surge testing capacity was meant to be able to handle 77,000 samples a day, the Government announced in late January, but the system came under intense pressure when demand was less than 30,000 a day.
This morning Hipkins told RNZ that the Government will seek answers around why the advice on test processing capacity was so wrong, but in the meantime the focus was on righting the wrong and getting results for those who were still waiting.
Hipkins added that the isolation period for cases and household contacts was being looked at. It is currently 10 days, but could be cut to seven days.
The Government is also looking at the traffic light system and vaccine pass, and whether they will still be useful after the peak of the Omicron wave has subsided.
But Hipkins said any decisions on mandates would be based on public health advice, not on any of the demands of the protesters around Parliament.
Anti-vaccine and anti-mandate protesters have been occupying Parliament for 23 days, clogging the surrounding streets with cars and trucks, but this morning hundreds of police descended on Wellington's CBD at 6am to take back the occupation.
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Police say they have started towing cars, and are now moving to tow larger vehicles as they close in on Parliament - though they have yet to move in on the main protest area on Parliament's lawn.
Police faced protesters armed with homemade weapons such as pitchforks, tripwires, fire extinguishers and plywood shields. Some protesters also shined lasers at the police helicopter circling the operation from above.
Sixty people have been arrested and three police officers injured in the chaotic scenes this morning.
While police say the violent clashes and weapons are "disappointing" they are pleased with the number of people and vehicles that have voluntarily left the protest area this morning.
