Hundreds of thousands of people will be able to return to work quickly if they are a close contact of someone with Covid-19, as the Government's response to the pandemic evolves.
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) told interest.co.nz nearly 7000 businesses and organisations, covering up to 390,000 workers, had registered to partake in its Close Contact Exemption Scheme as at 4pm on Monday.
This means these businesses/organisations, which self-identified as providers of critical services, can enable employees who are close contacts to return to work after returning negative rapid antigen tests.
Without this exemption, they would have to isolate for seven days.
The aim of the exemption scheme is to prevent supply chains and critical services becoming completely disrupted when Omicron spreads through the community.
The exemption kicks in on Wednesday, when the country moves to Phase 2 of the Omicron response (see table below).
Those who receive the exemption have to be vaccinated and return negative tests prior to each day/shift they are at work during their isolation period. While they can go back to work, they can't go anywhere else during this time.
Businesses/organisations need to meet a criterion to be eligible for the exemption scheme. They need to provide a critical service for basic human needs such as food supply, key public services, lifeline utilities, transport, critical financial services, and social and animal welfare.
Total number of workers eligible for exemption: 390,000+
A MBIE spokesperson said the figures it provided interest.co.nz around the take-up of the exemption scheme include a small number of public sector employees. However essential workers employed by district health boards, Police, Corrections, Fire and Emergency New Zealand and ambulance services will have access to their own supply of rapid antigen tests and therefore may not need to register for the scheme.
So, the number of people eligible for shorter isolation if they’re a close contact will be well north of 390,000.
By way of context, 2.83 million people are in paid work in New Zealand, so 390,000 is equivalent to 14% of the workforce.
Importantly, MBIE noted not everyone registered to receive the exemption may end up using it.
“Given the risk of transmission from a close contact, businesses should be careful about the extent they use the scheme, as a Covid-19 case at work could result in greater absenteeism in the future,” MBIE said on its website.
'We are going to be relying on businesses to do the right thing'
Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins echoed this sentiment, adding, “This isn’t going to be a rigorously audited process. It would just be impossible to do that.
“So we are going to be relying on businesses to do the right thing; to follow the criteria we’ve set out...
“The next phase could well be more challenging than anything we’ve ever dealt with in our Covid-19 response to date, in the sense that we could end up with quite a large number of people isolating at home, either because they’ve got Covid-19 or they’re a contact of someone who has Covid-19.
“And of course, that has a flow-on effect for the economy, because they won’t be at work, but also, they won’t be out there spending money either. Businesses do need to be prepared for that.”
Logistics
While close contacts who work at large businesses or organisations will be able to access rapid antigen tests from their employers, others in the exemption scheme will have to physically collect tests from Ministry of Health hubs.
The Food and Grocery Council said this was inefficient, and it would be easier if the Ministry just sent tests to businesses and let them manage distribution.
The Government has been at pains to manage the distribution of rapid antigen tests in the face of what appears to be a global shortage.
Up until now, it has been encouraging people to get PCR tests, as these are more accurate, there has been capacity in the system to process these tests, and tolerance for Covid-19 in the community has been low.
But now that more people have received the booster, children are being vaccinated, we're dealing with an infectious (albeit less harmful) strain of the virus, and we really need to re-open the border, the risk tolerance is increasing. Hence, rapid antigen tests (which are about 80% accurate) will be used more.
They are still, however, not widely available in supermarkets or pharmacies.
Summary of phases of Omicron response
38 Comments
This is heading into fantasy land . Case numbers are still being published daily as if they are the bible truth of the matter but anybody with half a brain knows they are only test outcomes, already overtaken by time and vastly out numbered by untested cases. Omicron, if the experts are to believed, is about to swamp NZ. If it is not happening already, test results will be as meaningless as covid tracing as neither will be anywhere near accurate or timely. All this blasted bureaucracy is worthless. As overseas New Zealanders have to now take their own responsibility, individually. Get sick, hope you get better, if not call the doctor as/when it comes to it & yes some are going to end up in hospital and there will be mortalities. That’s the way it is because amongst all that supposed regime there will be thousands & thousands who are unaware in that they asymptomatic or not going to declare a sniffle if it means a diminished pay packet. All of that plus the returnees about to pour in is simply going to turn this great bureaucratic plan into a pointless exercise in futility.
One of the many hallmarks of our COVID-19 response; implementing harsh measures by claiming they're required to keep us all safe, and then suddenly deciding they're not that important anymore once the lobbyists get stuck in.
Cost of compliance getting too much? No need to scan Vaccine Passes anymore, just sight 'em. Having trouble retaining fast food workers? Let's remove the vaccination requirement for them then, and we'll just ask COVID nicely to stay clear of Mickey D's instead. Don't like our isolation requirements? Well, if you pinky-swear that you're an essential service, we won't make you follow them - just promise you'll be careful, okay?
What a joke.
Look it would far more meaningful and impacting if they published daily, something like the dry season forest fire warnings etc, a graph of the status of our hospital services, case loads including but not limited to covid, ie is NZ in the danger zone. Of course they won’t because right from the start the government has been too frightened to actually admit any shortcomings in this regard, quite the opposite in fact if you listen to Little & Robertson. Acknowledge completely that historically, this predicament does not lie entirely at this government’s door but New Zealanders should have been given these facts clearly and openly at the beginning of the pandemic. That in turn may have persuaded the government to move budgeting more meaningfully in this area, than cycle bridges & trains, & much much earlier recruiting health workers & clinicians with priority to return to NZ. Any reasonable NZr would understand & accept the logic of that.
It's important to keep the public frightened to justify the government's absurd actions. That's why we get daily case numbers, daily scary articles. That's why the PM has a sign language translator. As if what she was saying was more important than god's words to Adam on the day of his creation. It's also really important to wear masks because if nobody that you know has died from covid, even friends of friends, then masks should remind you that somehow something serious is going on, and the government's absurd actions are indeed justified.
A point of view I am seeing more of in my friends / family / colleagues.
When the original Covid strain hit the experts were correctly right to criticise any parallels with more commonly encountered viruses such as the flu. However, Omicron seems to be much closer to the flu in terms of its transmission and impact, particularly on the vaccinated population.
The vast majority of us have had to put our plans, lives and businesses into idle for almost a year while we waited for the hesitant to declare themselves as wanting the vaccine or not waiting to hit the magic 90% mark when freedoms were drip fed back into our lives.
Now here we are again, intermittently isolating at great personal cost to slow the inevitable spread of a virus that while not totally benign to the vaccinated /boosted, poses a threat very similar to the flu. However, for those who have exercised their right not to vaccinate, the virus will have more serious consequences. It is for them that we must absorb these public health measures and not simply live with the virus.
While the Wellington protest is loud and visible. I'd suggest that a much greater silent protest is going on where many vaccinated Kiwis are no longer scanning in and are turning off bluetooth. Why? Perhaps folk are opting to go about their business while minimising their risk of being pinged by the Public Health services. The unvaccinated have made their choice, is it time they carried the consequence of their decision more personally?
Food for thought.
Omicron is far less severe even for the unvaccinated. Given our current rates of adult vaccination coverage, the position that the unvaccinated are a lurking public health threat is increasingly difficult to sustain.
It also varies by age. An unvaccinated 20 year old is at less risk than a fully vaccinated 75 year old. Yet one can't do anything in public. Let's just reunite and get on with it.
Oh the old "the unvaccinated are holding us to ransom" argument. Look, get over yourself. They have the right not to be vaccinated, and if you are still scared with 2 or 3 shots, then surely you can see those shots were for nothing.
The health system will not be overwhelmed like all the chicken littles have been saying for 2 years. It's just not a serious disease.
On a related note, my wife has been feeling very ill for 2 days after the booster, and my brother has mentioned he's had some breathing and heart tremor issues - he's very fit and in very good health.
I know these are anecdotes, but...
I don't think I will get the booster, I am not so worried about omicron anyway.
I have a medical background so this isn't just an opinion piece. I have encountered similar symptoms from patients. I did a literature search and side effects such as myocarditis which are moderately serious but transient are real with the vaccine (be it 1st, 2nd or 3rd dose) and this would certainly explain the symptoms you witnessed although I am choosing this side effect more as an example. The risk of getting the same side effect with the actual covid infection rather than the vaccine prompted immune response is around 25 x more likely and usually much more severe.
Your posts show you as a data kind of person so I hope this helps you make your own informed decision. The booster offers a significant improvement in protection to specifically the Omicron variant but it is another roll of the dice in terms of side effect as you have identified.
My opinion is that while most of us probably never even got exposed to the original virus or delta, we are all likely to encounter Omicron so I chose to get boosted which is fortunate since I am mandated to.
CITM, what do you think about having 3 vaccinations in 4.5 months?
I'm in housey's boat that I've had two doses but I'm seriously underwhelmed about getting the booster 3 months after the 2nd jab. Originally it was 6 months, then 4 months, now 3.
We can't vax our way out of this and the data shows the best immunity is unvaxxed infection. Not so good for hospitalisations of course but I'm happy to take my chances and wait until my 6 months comes around and evaluate from there. (I pretty much expect to get it before then tbh)
Yes exactly Muzled - getting vaccinated per se doesn't worry me, but getting vaccinated so many times in a short space of time kind of worries me - is there any data or theoretical basis to suggest that is a valid cause for concern???
My wife has just got out of bed and she's not good at all, and friggin' grumpy.... :(
Thanks mate. Are symptoms such as myocarditis showing up much with omicron - that's the symptom I worry about, and sounds like that's what my brother had (and he's obviously close in a genetic sense to me).
I can put up fine with feeling tired, achy and nauseous for a few days
Did your brother know what his normal resting heart rate was and if it changed?
I had the booster shot and my normal RHR is 52/53. Yet since the booster it has gone up. My FitBit app records it. Nothing extreme but it was noticeable. Daily record: 52, 52, 53, 53, 53, vaxxed 54, 56, 58, 58, 61, 61, 64, 62...
Interesting - my heart rate was elevated for about 20 hours after the first shot. I also had racing pulse and chest pain although I wonder if the later was in my head. The great thing is I can see it on my heart rate monitor, stands out massively on my heart rate history. No issues after the second jab however. No booster for me unless I am forced to for work. I think there will be a backlash about continuing jabs, from what I am hearing from people….and they are certainly not anti vaxers. On another note the UK times published graphs showing the omicron risk of hospitalisation per 100,000 people. Very underwhelming. For my age group 4 per 100,000 for unvaxed, dropping to below 1 for vaxed. This info should be published in nz it would help reduce the fear.
They certainly should make that data more widely known. Your heart rate response seems like it could be normal after having a vaccination. A short duration of high heart rate while the body figures out what is going on.
Some people have had it go up quite high and stay abnormally high, like 100 or something for a fit person and then get diagnosed with heart inflammation once they can convince a doctor to take them seriously. They tell their doctor their RHR is normally 50 and now its 100 after the vax and the doctor prescribes them anti-anxiety pills saying it is all in their head.
Hi HM,
There are a wide spectrum of responses to the vaccine. I guess that the thing to keep in mind is that this is a fragment of the whole virus in essence. A vigorous reaction to the vaccine is difficult to interpret but is widely regarded to be a "positive" reaction. By that I mean that your body has had a relatively small assault and provocation by the mRNA in the vaccine. However, it has prompted a large physiological reaction with a raised HR etc as your immune system steps up to generate an antibody response. That would indicate that your body is well prepared to deal with the actual virus now.
If no more virus is encountered the antibody count Peters out over time and so then we need to re-provoke it (2nd jab) and now the booster to give more enduring antibody levels. The injections are identical. I had a mild 1st and 3rd reaction but was not great for a week over the 2nd one. Our genetics and therefor immune systems are different hence the response and secondary reactions.
Another perspective that I feel leans towards "pro vaccine bias" is that if the mRNA fragments make you feel this sick, imagine what the whole virus would be capable of. There is some logic there too but not quite enough for me.
I totally understand your concerns especially given your brother's experience. Myocarditis is well recognised after any viral illness, it's not common which is important to remember. The most important thing is to not exercise if myocarditis is present as this is known to be a cause of sudden death (very rare) and treat chest pain as a medical emergency irrespective of proximity to vaccines especially in older guys as this is our Achilles heel unfortunately.
I hope this helps. I'm picking that the booster will soon be rolled in to the next version of the vaccine passport which puts another dimension to making a decision. If you give that a better than even chance, and you'd boost to access the passport then I'd get it done soonest as you want the benefit during this outbreak if you're going to accept the small but real risks that accompany it.
@ Caughtinthemiddle The risk of getting the same side effect with the actual covid infection rather than the vaccine prompted immune response is around 25 x more likely and usually much more severe.
I highly doubt it. 25x wasn’t true of Alpha and Delta and it's sure isn’t true of Omicron. It's a very simple calculation. You need to know the number of covid induced myocarditis cases divided by the total number of covid infections, and herein lies the problem. The numerator is known but the denominator is unknown and likely to be vastly underestimated. On the other hand we know the rates of vaccine induced myocarditis is about 1/5000. However in saying that my girlfriend sat on the couch after her second dose with a heart rate over 100. She'd previously had covid in 2020 and even though I never got vaccinated she felt pressured by the media so she went and got it. My gut feeling is that vaccine induced myocarditis is significantly underestimated.
There's also another problem, I think Peter McCullough referred to it as "determinism". If you get the vaccine then the probability of you being exposed to a nasty dose of spike protein is 100%, ie it's deterministic. If you get covid then it's quite likely that you'll have a mild case, most people do, and then you'll never get that nasty exposure.
I don't know if they are still leaving it off the information sheet they hand out but our health.govt website if you are experence "New onset chest pain, racing heart, or shortness of breath" you should "Speak to your health professional promptly...". The visit should be free.
This is way more common than you think (speaking from anecdotal experience). You can get ACC if you can attribute it to the vax. These symptoms are indicating potential permanent heart damage.
Anyone notice the number of masks being worn at the Superbowl? Stadium around 100,000. I don't really know California's state health system or if you have to have medical insurance to get into a hospital with covids. Sure is chalk and cheese compared with NZs current approach Frankly I would join the Wellington demonstration but there are too many odd balls there and at my age, took the decision to get vaxxed and boosted.
I'm also not signing in anymore unless specifically approached. Happy to wear a mask though.
It's becoming completely absurd. Omicron has fully displaced delta, is less dangerous than the flu, and for most people is a few days of sniffles. Yes some elderly and vulnerable people will die, just as they would if they caught some other virus. But we can't do anything about that - all the extreme measures we have taken have little or no effect on an aerosolised virus anyway, despite our superstitious convictions that they have. The virus simply follows the same pattern in every country (as variants evolve and population immunity develops), regardless of lockdowns, masking, mandates etc. More than half the world's population has now been injected with hastily developed vaccines with very little testing - normally it takes at least 4 years to properly test a new vaccine. Theses drugs have been sold to desperate governments for obscene profits by pharma companies with criminal histories, who have no legal liability for side-effects. Yet global infections are astronomically higher than they ever were before vaccination. Politicians and media have terrorised their citizens, and the resultant pathological fear continues to block out all rationality.
Radio comment this morning that 70% of those turning up for tests had no symptoms whatsoever. That simply confirms your point that fear has been implanted into our society by both government & media. The thing is, fear generates panic and in that regard the government may well have now, a tiger by the tail.
FDA approval is a long process you are correct. Much of this is to do with the applications being processed in order of lodgement and then subsequent enquiries and further data being needed - each time a queue being formed. Fast tracking can and does occur and that is how the vaccines were able to reach us much faster. I also must pick you on "very little testing". This is a moot point as so many people have received the vaccination now, the argument about testing is no longer relevant. The vaccine has statistically been found to be very safe with an acceptable side effect profile and compares favourably with many other vaccines in this regard. In addition its huge rollout gives those statistics much greater credibility.
Your comment also does no delineate the effect of Omicron on vaccinated vs unvaccinated only the vulnerable. Perhaps if you had quoted some statistics around this you would have undermined your own comments about the value of the vaccine?
However, I share your general frustrations and I am leaning towards a position where I feel that the public health measures are becoming impotent against Omicron' spread. Couple that with a relatively benign impact on the vaccinated, it becomes easier to conclude that the wider consequences of the public health measures are worse than the virus itself for the vaccinated.
An "acceptable side effect profile" - really? So you have no qualms with these reported figures (from various dates in January), considered to be a small proportion of actual side effects?
US VAERS system: 1,071,856 reports of adverse events following vaccination, 178,994 serious injuries, 22,607 deaths
UK Yellow Card system: 1,439,579 adverse events, 1,972 deaths
DAEN Australia: 104,214 adverse events, 746 deaths
Medsafe NZ: 51,710 adverse events, 2,447 serious, 147 deaths
We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment.
Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.