New Zealand to end 3.5 months of lockdown by December photo Reuters
Lighten Restrictions

New Zealand to end 3.5 months of lockdown by December

Nov 22, 2021, 8:00 AM
Rose De La Cruz

Rose De La Cruz

Writer/Columnist

"While no country has been able to eliminate Delta completely, New Zealand is better positioned than most to tackle it," New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said of the country’s new strategy to control the virus.

New Zealand will end 3.5 months of lockdown in Auckland, the largest city, as it adopts a new coronavirus control strategy, said a three-and-a-half-month lockdown in the country's largest city Auckland early next month as it adopts a new coronavirus control strategy, said Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

Ardern said that from 11:59 p.m. on December 2, New Zealand would adopt a new Covid-19 response -- first flagged last month -- that aims to contain the highly contagious Delta variant, rather than attempting to eliminate it completely.

"The hard truth is that Delta is here and not going away," she told reporters.
"While no country has been able to eliminate Delta completely, New Zealand is better positioned than most to tackle it," she stressed.

Ardern's coronavirus response until now has strived for "Covid Zero" elimination, with strict lockdowns, rigorous contact tracing and tight border controls.

While it has resulted in just 40 deaths in a population of five million, pressure had been building to end a lockdown in Auckland imposed in mid-August when Delta was first detected.

Ardern had initially planned to implement the new system when the vaccination rate in the country reached 90 percent but set the December 2 opening-up date even though the level is currently around 83 percent.

Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said he was comfortable with what amounts to the largest revamp of Covid-19 policy since the start of the pandemic, AFP reported.

"We're going into this next phase in, one could argue, the best possible position," he said.
"We've got a controlled outbreak, we're going into summer and we've got high and increasing vaccination rates."

Under the new three-tier traffic light system, green has almost no virus controls, while red means businesses can remain open but customers must be vaccinated and observe social distancing.

Vaccine passes required

"The key difference between the two systems is that vaccine passes will shortly be required at places like bars, gyms and restaurants," Ardern said.

She said Auckland would initially be placed under the red setting and officials were still determining how to classify other areas.

Auckland is currently sealed off from the rest of New Zealand, with roadblocks due to be removed on December 15.

Stringent quarantine rules for international arrivals will remain in place but Ardern has committed to easing them early next year.

New Zealand has been unable to beat an outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant of Covid-19 centered in Auckland, forcing Ardern to abandon her acclaimed elimination strategy and switch to a system of treating the virus as endemic, Reuters said.

In the new system, regions will be put into a red, orange or green setting depending on their level of exposure to Covid-19 and vaccination rates. Auckland, which is the epicenter of the outbreak, will start at red.

Ardern said about 83 percent of eligible New Zealanders are fully vaccinated now and if all those people who are due for their second shot get it, that number would rise to 88 percent.

The government previously said the country would drop lockdown measures and move into the new traffic-light system to manage outbreaks after 90 percent of the eligible population was fully vaccinated.

New Zealand enforced some of the tightest pandemic restrictions among OECD nations that has helped limit the spread of Covid-19 so far and helped the economy bounce back faster than many of its peers.

The country has so far reported about 7,000 cases in all and 39 deaths. Its international borders are still closed to the rest of the world.

Tags: #NewZealand, #Covid19, #lockdown, #Deltavariant, #economy


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