The Government is removing self-isolation requirements for vaccinated travellers to and New Zealanders from the rest of the world can return from midnight this Friday 4 March.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and epidemiologist Sir David Skegg have been detailing the plan to the press at a post-Cabinet briefing this afternoon.

The government says advice from the Strategic Covid-19 Public Health Advisory Group and the Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield is that the time is now to make these changes.

All self-isolation requirements for vaccinated travellers entering New Zealand end from 11:59pm, Wednesday, March 2.

'That means that all Kiwis coming home and tourists entering the country will be able to step off the plane and immediately connect with family and friends and enjoy all New Zealand has to offer,” says Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins.

He explains that travellers will still be required to have a negative pre-departure test, and undertake two rapid antigen tests on arrival and at day five/six.

If anyone returns a positive result they will be required to report it and isolate for the same period as a community case.

'Returnees are also asked to follow up their positive rapid antigen test with a PCR test, so that we can run whole genome sequencing and determine the variant,” says Hipkins, explaining this will allow for keeping tabs on any emerging variants.

'Caution has served us well during the past two years and as we continue to move through the Omicron outbreak and peak, we will continue to remove restrictions when advised it is safe to do so – as we always said we would,” says Hipkins.

New Zealanders abroad are now able to return from Friday,

'We are able to take these decisions because we have a highly vaccinated population and good public health restrictions through the Covid-19 Protection Framework in place,” says Hipkins, whilst spelling out a reminder for people to receive their booster.

'To the nearly 1 million people who are due their booster, I urge you to get it today,” he says.

'The fact remains that if you are unvaccinated you are much more likely to end up in hospital with Covid-19 than if you are vaccinated and boosted.”

He says he hopes this will be 'a shot in the arm” for the nation's tourism sector, regional economies and our overall economic position.

Border cases have been decreasing over the past month, both in number and as a proportion of arriving travellers. The seven-day average for border cases at the weekend was nine and four, compared with a seven-day average of around 6,700 for cases in the community.

Unvaccinated New Zealanders, refugees and some community cases will still potentially require managed isolation.

'But it does mean we will begin to scale back some of our managed isolation capacity,” says Hipkins, promising further updates in the weeks to come.