Kia ora koutou, 

Thanks for your patience as we work through the finer details of the Alert Level 2 guidance for sport and recreation. 

As you know, all of New Zealand except for Auckland moves to Alert Level 2 from 11.59pm tonight. We are waiting to see the new health order before we can confirm our detailed guidance. We have temporarily removed our Alert Level 2 information online pending this information being available.  In the meantime, the following guidance should be used for planning purposes.  

New Alert Level 2 guidance for sport and recreation 

As with previous Alert Level 2 guidance, you can do your usual sport and recreation activities if you can do them safely. This includes club and team sports, as well as indoor sports. Indoor sport and recreation facilities such as gyms, swimming pools, dance studios and health clubs can open, but with extra safety measures around physical distancing and sanitation.  

As signaled previously, extra precautions are required to combat the increased transmissibility of the Covid-19 Delta variant. These additional public health measures are as follows:     

• The physical distancing requirement in indoor venues and facilities is now two meters, rather than one meter. Facilities may need to restrict numbers to help with physical distancing.
• Community sports are limited to groups of 100 outdoors and 50 indoors. These group limits include all players and spectators (but not referees and officials). We will revert shortly with information around whether multiple groups can gather in one location if they are separated.
• Mask wearing at indoor sports facilities is required apart from when you are exercising or playing sports. You do not need to wear a mask if exercising outdoors.
• Mandatory record keeping and QR code scanning applies to all indoor sport and recreation facilities such as recreation centres, swimming pools, gyms and sports clubrooms, as well as commercial and ticketed sport and recreation events

 Travel across alert level boundaries 

There are very strict rules in place to manage travel across areas with different alert levels in place (eg: in and out of Auckland). Travel across an alert level boundary is only possible for essential personal or business reasons which are set out here. Travelling across an alert level boundary for recreational purposes (e.g. to go for a walk or to train or play sport) is not permitted. See this website for more information about travel across alert level boundaries.

Contacting Sport NZ 

Please contact your Partnerships Manager for further help or support if you have one, otherwise feel free to send COVID-19 related queries to this address, and we’ll respond as soon as possible: Covid19response@sportnz.org.nz  

Ngā mihi, 
Raelene Castle