Video / NZ HeraldActing Prime Minister Grant Robertson stands by Managed Isolation and Quarantine (MIQ) remaining until February despite top health official's advice that the system was no longer justified in November last year. Robertson told Newstalk ZB's Tim Dower that MIQ would have ended in January as initially planned had it not been for the arrival of Omicron in New Zealand. The highly transmissable variant became a greater threat to the country, Robertson said, and the extended MIQ period meant vaccination rates and booster rates could be increased. In November last year director of public health Dr Caroline McElnay wrote to director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield seeking his agreement to an updated Public Health Risk Assessment. Robertson stated that before the Government was able to make a decision on MIQ, Bloomfield had taken the advice to other health experts to be peer reviewed.

Source: New Zealand Herald April 19, 2022 23:25 UTC