Orange and Contact Tracing

Andy Bunyan

Hi team,

And so we have moved to orange today which is another step in the right direction for us hopefully. It's a few weeks now since the need to QR code ourselves in to shops and offices etc was eased. In turn that resulted in many QR posters being torn down as a mood of liberation set in.

Cut then to the Public Health Response Order and it is intriguing to see that codes must still be displayed. Further, that workplaces must still have alternative mechanisms in place for contact tracing and so on and so forth.

A very quick check of my own now largely redundant QR app shows that less than 40,000 have scanned in nationwide today which strongly suggests that there is wholesale disinclination which is not surprising as things seem to ease. And yet those legal requirements continue to prevail even if Orange level guidance seems to make no mention of it.

Any thoughts at all?

Steve H

And yet those legal requirements continue to prevail even if Orange level guidance seems to make no mention of it — Andy Bunyan

Think there would be a real mutiny if that were pushed Andy, contact tracing ceased to be relevant when the eradication policy ended.

Andy Bunyan

And that is what is so perplexing Steve - if the curtain has by all accounts fallen on it then it should be struck from the legislation. Let's face it, if it all turns to custard the mechanisms could quite easily be brought back on line.

Steve H

There's a bunch of redundant legislation on the books, unenforced,and gathering dust. But I agree, this should be tidied up.Hopefully,we now have a play book for the next time this happens.

Pam Graham

As far as I can see the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Order 2021 has been updated to reflect that displaying QR codes is not required and you don't have to have alternative methods for contract tracing. The body of the legislation is the framework but you have to go to the schedules 5, 6 and 7 (Green, Orange and Red) to see what applies in each of the traffic light settings. The clauses about QR codes have now been removed from all the relevant schedules.

Sandra Nieuwoudt

I agree with Pam

Andrew

Covid legislation has been literally changing on a daily basis Drafters cannot keep up with what caucus decides. I've lost count of the amendments of amendment of amendments.

Best not worry about it at all now. No regulator is going to have a clue just which piece of enactment they are going to ping you with.

Jackie Brown-Haysom

Visited the international airport terminal in Auckland a week ago and was shocked to find the only QR codes on display were at the two or three food outlets still in operation. If/when a new Covid variant comes into the country it'll be important to identity potential exposures as quickly as possible, so surely international travel terminals should still be requiring people to record their visits?

Yonny Yeung

↪Jackie Brown-Haysom

They told everyone to keep the QR codes in their drawers and whip them out when the government changes its mind again. We simply left ours up. It's not mandatory to scan and it's not mandatory to remove them, so we just left them up for now.

Most non Kiwis won't have a clue about the Covid Tracer App. Unless it is promoted at the arrivals with large posters saying mandatory, I doubt many people will get their phones out, connect to the free WiFi and download that app and use it.

Orange and Contact Tracing

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