Live: Gathering limit to increase to 100 on Friday

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced the gathering limit will increase to 100 people from noon this Friday.

Ardern said the decision was able to made because there was no evidence the relaxing of rules had led to an increased number of cases, as had been the case overseas.

The easing of restrictions would be good for community sport and was only able to happen because the country had successfully gone "hard and early".

Church services, weddings and funerals will all be able to have 100 people.

"Many more gatherings will be able to occur. These changes are good news for business."

Ardern said moving to level 1 should be done as quickly as safely possible.

Cabinet will look at whether the country was ready to move to level 1 on June 8, and will mark June 22 - four weeks from today - as the date be considered to move to level 1.

Cabinet met today to review the current 10-person limit on gatherings and the 50-person limit on funerals and tangi.

Ardern is expected to give her post-Cabinet press conference at 4pm, alongside director-general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield.

There were no new cases of Covid-19 overnight, and with no new recoveries, the number of active cases remains at 27.

Alert level 2 has been in place for 12 days, and it usually takes about 10 days for changes in alert level behaviour to be reflected in the number of new Covid-19 cases.

Bars opened for the first time under level 2 on Thursday, so any potential spread that might have happened in a crowded bar might not show up in testing data until the end of this week.

Ardern has previously said that social gatherings at bars have been the trigger for some of the country's significant clusters, which was why re-opening them under level 2 was phased in.

It was also a reason that she decided to put a temporary 10-person restriction on indoor and outdoor gatherings under level 2, even though she had previously set the limit at 100 people.

The 10-person limit was changed to 50 people for funerals and tangi following public outrage.

Ardern is also expected to outline the criteria for moving to alert level 1, which is the "prepare" stage, meaning the virus is contained in New Zealand.

At the moment, the biggest differences at alert level 1 include no requirement for any physical distancing - with it only being "encouraged" - and no restrictions on gatherings.

Intensive testing and rapid tracing and isolation of contacts would continue, and all schools and workplaces can open.

Border restrictions would continue to minimise the risk of importing Covid-19 cases.

Bloomfield visited Auckland quarantine and managed isolation facilities on Friday.

Anyone arriving in New Zealand must spend at least 14 days in managed isolation or quarantine, and over the weekend, the 10,000th passenger was processed.