Now that we are at Alert Level 1 have you been wondering how you can have an electronic contact tracing system in place for your regulars or visitors?

We have now been given information on how to give access to any Parish or Organisation to the Government's Contract Tracing application.

Although requirements for Parishes to complete contact tracing information will cease at Level 1, you do need to be registered with the Government app so that any guests or regulars can keep a note of their movements more easily. This will become especially important if COVI-19 emerges in our communities in the future. 

Individuals can download the app for your smart phone from your app store. The Ministry of Health have information on this on their website. This will put an app on your phone that you can use whenever you see an official NZ COVID Tracer poster. 

The Director General of Health has indicated that the National System is the preferred one to use as it will allow rapid contact tracing for any COVID-19 outbreaks in the future and that we will need to keep systems in place for at least the next two years and beyond. If we need to do contact tracing in the future, we can still do this manually, but the app allows any individual's movements and potential contacts to be traced nationally. 

We are encouraging all Parishes who intend to open facilities in the future to register for this so you can display a customised poster that people can scan using their phones. It will certainly assist you to keep operating at Alert Level 2 if we need to move back into this in the future. 

If you would like to have your building included in this, please contact John Graveston before the end of Thursday 11 June, and we will organise this for you. We need specific information from you (please see attached template you can fill in and send back to us).

An email will arrive at the address you have stipulated which will allow you to print off a poster where people can scan the app. There are also other posters that help people download the Governments contact tracing app on their phone if they have yet to do so.