Preparing for Omicron: A proactive Government response is urgently needed to minimise harms

In this blog we summarise how Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) could improve preparations for a likely national outbreak of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 to minimise harms to health and the economy. The first urgent priority is to increase measures to delay the arrival of the Omicron variant to give more preparation time. We also need to consider an explicit shift from the current suppression strategy to mitigation. A clear mitigation strategy will favour adjustments to existing public health and social measures to ‘flatten the curve’ and minimise the risk of health service overload and social and economic disruptions.