Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern stated Covid restrictions such as mandates and vaccine passes will start to ease when the country is “well beyond” the peak of the Omicron variant outbreak.

During Monday’s post-cabinet press conference, Ardern said case numbers will be likely to reach a peak in mid to late March, reports The Guardian.

“It’s likely then, that very soon, we will all know people who have Covid or we will potentially get it ourselves,” the PM stated.

Previously during the pandemic, Ardern said this would have been a “scary” scenario, yet this is less the case now due to the highly vaccinated population; Omicron being a milder variant than previous ones; and health measures slowing down its spread.

“So far, that plan is working. We had 46 cases per 100,000 people compared to 367 in New South Wales, and 660 in Victoria, at the same point in the outbreak,” the PM added.

New Zealand registered 2,365 new Covid cases on Monday, 116 hospitalisations and another two fatalities, bringing the total number of deaths to 55 since the start of the pandemic.

“If we hadn’t had vaccine passes, as we managed Delta, we would have had to instead use more general restrictions across the whole population. They have always been the least bad option. But while they have been necessary, as I’ve always said, they have also been temporary,” Ardern said.

“They will remain important in some areas though, for some time,” she added.

The Prime Minister said that although setting an exact date for relaxing mandates is tough, the government needs to be confident New Zealand is “well beyond the peak.”

Ardern’s announcement followed the 14th day of anti-mandate demonstrators within parliament’s grounds. The PM said in a message to the protesters: “Everyone is over Covid. No one wants to live with rules or restrictions. But had we not all been willing to work together to protect one another, then we all would have been worse off as individuals, including losing people we love.

“That hasn’t happened here for the most part and that is a fact worth celebrating, rather than protesting,” she said.