New Zealand phased border re-opening has been pushed out to the end of February from January due to the omicron variant.

Some believe bigger changes to the COVID response are coming. Auckland University COVID modeller Dr Dion O'Neale says the traffic light system wasn't created with Omicron in mind.

We wouldn't expect orange or even red to limit the spread of Omicron," he explained.

"To be honest it's probably going to be going back to something like the alert level interventions."

NZD/USD is following in the footsteps of the Australian dollar and has not been directly affected with the domestic covid latest news.