…And Relax (A Bit)

Today’s announcement of the relaxation of some rules around Covid provide a bit of relief to the beleaguered hospitality and entertainment industries. Not much, but a bit. From Saturday 26^th March, we will still be under the red traffic light setting, but…

·         Indoor gatherings can increase from 100 to 200 people

·         Outdoor gatherings are now unlimited

·         Masks no longer required outdoors

·         QR code scanning is no longer required

And from 5^th April…

·         Vaccine passes no longer required

·         Mandates for certain sectors to be vaccinated (all except health and aged care, border workers and corrections) to be removed.

The traffic light setting will also be reviewed on 4^th April.

Hooray! Unfortunately, this is too late to help Ladyhawke, who has decided to cancel (rather than postpone again) her Time Flies tour ☹. Hopefully, by the time of Midnight Oil’s gig on 10 May, restrictions will have been loosened further to allow indoor concerts to take place.

Moves were already afoot ahead of today’s announcement to get back to pub quiz, as this is still allowable under the red setting, but with a maximum 100 people. This was cancelled by the pub and quizmaster as they wanted to protect themselves as much as possible. The new 200-person limit is higher than the capacity of the Old Bailey, so no worries there.

This also means that the remaining matches of the cricket World Cup and Super Rugby can be played with no restrictions. Sadly, the White Ferns have not been doing too well so it looks unlikely that they’ll make the semi-finals, so we won’t be seeing them in action again. We may look at going to see the Hurricanes in action, though.

 With any luck, the next announcement will see a move to Orange setting, and things will get back to neo-normal.