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Summary
- Jacinda Ardern has urged people to help in ensuring that people do not ignore COVID-19 restrictions in a press conference on 1 March.
- Auckland has been put under a 7-day lockdown due to a person who had been infectious for a week but was not in quarantine.
- The Alert Level 3 lockdown would allow people to leave their house for only essential work and shopping.
- Ardern’s government is under an increasing stress on responding to those people who are undermining the country’s coronavirus response.
At a press briefing on 1 March, Ardern stated that breaking the rules was intolerable and people who had done the same were already facing the full judgement of the entire nation. She added that COVID-19 response of the country was dependent on everyone’s participation in complying to rules and simultaneously making sure that others also follow the same.
She stated that people need to back and support each other. Ashley Bloomfield, NZ public health official also revealed that the vaccine rollout would move into household contacts of border workers in this week, followed by frontline non-border health workers.
Ardern had put Auckland under a 7-day lockdown beginning from 28 February, prompted by a coronavirus-infected person who had been contagious for a week but had not been in isolation. The rest of the NZ was put under Level 2 restrictions, which put a break on public gatherings.
This is the second lockdown in the month after Auckland was put to a 3-day lockdown in mid-February after the local emergence of the UK variant of coronavirus. The government also confirmed that genomic sequencing revealed that the latest community case of coronavirus in Auckland was associated to the South Auckland cluster.
Auckland can extend or lower alert levels contingent on the investigation done by the authorities this week. Ardern’s government is under pressure on responding to those alleged to be weakening New Zealand’s COVID-19 response.
As at 1 March, NZ has 67 active cases with the total confirmed cases of 2,022.
Ardern under stress
Auckland Mayor Phil Goff stated that under Level 3 restrictions, Auckland would lose about 200 jobs and more than $30 million per day. He added that vaccine roll-out must be prioritised in the city to avert lockdowns, safeguard incomes and jobs in the future.
The National Party is forcing for stricter rules for COVID-19 rule breakers and larger implementation of self-isolation directives as multiple people disobeyed the same. Chris Bishop, COVID-19 response minister also stated that NZ’s high-trust model was beginning to break down and urged that offenders must be fined.
The urgency was to detect cases within the community and eliminate the virus. Rapid antigen testing and waste-water testing were a low-cost and speedy way to identify cases within the community during a lockdown, as per Mr Bishop.
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ACT leader David Seymour also stated that one person couldn’t be blamed entirely as the government had permitted the virus to come back into the community and did not succeed in containing the same.
