Moving houses during the COVID-19 pandemic can be a tough task to navigate. It’s brought a whole bunch of new rules into our lives. One of the most obvious? Face masks. Depending on where you live and what you do for work, they’ve drifted in and out of our lives over the past year: like that Tinder date you were seeing for a while, but it kind of fizzled out. They probably wouldn’t stop talking about the Tiger King doco, and you weren’t about it…
But let’s get back on track. Different countries currently have different rules regarding face masks and who needs to wear them. New Zealand has had Alert Level 1 restrictions in place for a while now, which means that masks are not mandatory. So don’t panic if your movers rock up with naked faces.
While it’s not mandatory for your movers to wear masks, there are a few things they must do:
- Display QR codes for the COVID-Tracer app
No matter the alert level in place, all businesses have to display the official QR codes (i.e. those little pixely things that you scan with your phone) for the NZ COVID-Tracer app.
- If unwell, stay at home
This one applies to everyone, including your hired movers. Alert Level 1 guidelines say that if you’ve got cold and flu symptoms, you need to stay at home. This means your movers won’t be coughing and spluttering or infecting you with any nasties – even if it’s just a common cold.
- Use as many people as you like
There’s some good news. Under Alert Level 1, there are no restrictions on gatherings. This means you can enlist as many people as you like with the move, whether they’re paid movers or random people off the street. On second thoughts, maybe don’t use random people off the street.
- Follow all other government guidelines
You can find all the government guidelines which your moving company needs to follow at www.business.govt.nz/covid-19/.
Remember that these health guidelines are only applicable when we’re on Alert Level 1. If something happened to get us back to Alert Level 2 (touch wood) then lots of this would change. Convenient, huh? For now, however, you can rejoice in the fact that your friendly movers won’t have to wear masks – so you can see how happy they are to help you with the move!
