Act leader David Seymour has reiterated a call for a radical relaxation of Covid measures, saying Omicron's infectiousness and mildness have been a gamechanger for Covid policy.
"Omicron is different is spreads faster and... its much milder," Seymour told TVNZ's Q&A on Sunday
"The cost of stopping spread is much higher and the benefit is much lower," Seymour said.
Seymour also said everything from MIQ and QR code scanning to vaccine mandates should be scrapped.
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"I've been a very strong supporter of vaccination and still am, but at this point we have a 96 per cent vaccination rate," Seymour said.
"Continuing to exclude people from a whole range of aspects of life is going to make very little difference to whether they catch it, it may slightly delay when they catch it, but it's not going to change the overall outcome.
"Why do we keep doing this to ourselves, if it's not making a difference but it is imposing cost then let's move on from control," he said.
Seymour launched a fourth update of his party's Covid policy this week, which looked at different Covid restrictions and questioned whether the benefits outweighed the costs in the Omicron era.
He was particularly critical of MIQ and QR code scanning, which he said were not effective enough to justify their cost.
"Every business is required to display a QR code and you are legally required to scan in - it's not making any difference, we should just dump it," Seymour said.
"MIQ - we have more cases in New Zealand than just about any other country at the moment, and we're trying to lock them out at huge cost to tourism, to business, to separated families - we should just dump it because it's not making any difference," he said.
New Zealand's confirmed new daily Covid cases per million people currently exceed those of the European Union and the United States.
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Advertise with NZME.Seymour argued that the Government should justify Covid regulations.
"If a measure that we are forced to comply with adds cost... does it make sense to continue to impose a cost when the benefit is miniscule," Seymour said.
"Rather than say we should keep sacrificing, keep allowing the Government to control many aspects of our lives for miniscule benefit - that's the wrong question. I think the Government should be justifying the restrictions it puts in place," he said.
