Shops can drop manual sign-ins

Businesses will no longer be required to provide a manual sign-in for customers under alert level 1.

However, they are being urged to continue to display QR code posters at the entry of premises, so people can scan in and can keep a record for themselves.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced a Covid-free New Zealand was moving to alert level 1, at 11:59 last night.

There had been confusion among businesses, specifically hospitality, whether contact tracing would be mandatory under level 1 and if keeping a register would be enforced.

‘‘We are asking all businesses and services where the public visit or enter to provide people the opportunity to maintain their own diaries of where they’ve been,’’ Ardern said.

In the meantime, government would continue working with sector groups, businesses, hospitality firms and others to encourage them to display QR codes via posters at the entrance of premises so everyone could maintain diaries via the NZ Covid Tracer App.

Improvements would be made to ensure the QR posters were as accessible as possible for businesses, she said.

The Government had also worked with the events sector on a voluntary code to ensure attendees’ details were captured at the bigger events, where the virus could spread easily.

‘‘You can do and go wherever you like, we just ask you keep a record of where you have been by scanning in – or noting down your movements for yourself,’’ Ardern said.

This was a key behaviour she was asking all New Zealanders to adopt at level 1.

Yesterday, the NZ Covid Tracer app recorded 522,000 registrations – an increase of 5000 since Sunday. The Government’s Covid-19 contact tracing app has limited functionality at the moment, but an update to add more features is expected this month.

Experts have said the national contact tracing system, which corners the virus if it spreads in the community, was considered lacking.

But multiple reviews and reports into the system are under way, there are promises of more staff being hired, and the ‘‘gold standard’’ – 80 per cent of a Covid19 case’s contacts isolated within 48 hours – is claimed to have been reached.