Time to help local businesses

Our hospitality and tourism businesses are desperate for a return to normality before we head into the visitor slowdown over winter. I know they were disappointed to learn on Monday that the Government had decided against relaxing COVID-19 restrictions. The Prime Minister said New Zealand is not yet ready to move from a Red traffic light setting to Orange with many parts of the country still experiencing a surge in COVID-19 infections.

Despite that decision, there was also good news about the COVID-19 response. The national daily average of cases has declined by 36 per cent and hospitalisations have fallen in Auckland. As predicted, infection rates in regions like ours are not yet declining at the same rate. Omicron arrived here later, so our hospitalisations will plateau later. The experts predict that the plateau will occur from the middle of this month. For now, the whole nation remains at the Red traffic light setting. While there is no limit to the number of people who can gather outdoors, a limit of 200 people remains on indoor gatherings and this is restricting our hospitality sector.

All of us want to see an end to these restrictions, but it pays to remain cautious. The Council has been operating under its own enhanced Red+ protocols for the past 10 weeks. These were implemented when the first Omicron community case was detected in the country. Since then, active COVID-19 cases in Northland have risen dramatically and most of us now know someone who has either been infected with COVID-19 or has been a close contact of someone who has. Most Council staff have been working from home under our Red+ protocols and this has limited work place transmission. Where staff cannot work from home, strict rules on physical distancing are applied and face masks are required in shared office areas. Nearly all meetings are held virtually, including council, community board and committee meetings. These stricter protocols have worked. While there have been 12 occasions where a potentially infected person has visited our offices, there have been just two cases of likely virus transmission. It is estimated that the enhanced Red+ protocols have helped to avert 52 council workplace infections. Even so, around 38 per cent of our staff have been impacted by the virus, either because they have received positive COVID-19 test results or were close contacts. This has reduced our ability to provide services. Staff shortages have forced most of our libraries, service centres, and i-SITEs to adopt reduced operating hours and, in some cases, facilities have closed temporarily.

The government says pandemic restrictions will be reduced as hospitalisation rates decrease. Its next review of traffic light settings will be on 14 April and we all hope to see a move to Orange settings. That would remove capacity limits at venues and gatherings and assist our tourism and hospitality sector. In the meantime, I urge you to support your local businesses wherever you can. They make this a great place to live and they need our help right now.