Auckland’s seven-day lockdown is due to lift on Sunday morning after no new cases of coronavirus were recorded in the community on Friday.
The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said Auckland would go from alert level three to level two at 6am on Sunday, while the rest of the country would move down to level one.
A decision made to downgrade Auckland to level one would be made before the following weekend.
Cabinet has decided to move Auckland to Alert Level 2, and the rest of New Zealand to Alert Level 1 at 6am Sunday 7 March.
Alert Level 2 may feel more like normal life, but it’s not yet business as usual. pic.twitter.com/Qmv7qZ7YtU
— Unite against COVID-19 (@covid19nz) March 5, 2021
America’s Cup sailing is to resume on Wednesday, and tickets went on sale almost immediately for cricket and netball matches on Sunday, Stuff reported.
In the meantime, church congregations will be capped at 100 people, and some contacts of the confirmed cases – or those who may have been exposed to the virus – would be required to continue to self-isolate.
No new cases of community transmission have been recorded in the past five days.
Ardern said the government was right to impose the seven-day lockdown, only weeks after lifting three days of snap restrictions, due to the more transmissible and unpredictable nature of the UK variant. “Level three provided us with an extra layer of security while we addressed the unknowns and reduced the risk,” she said.
At a post-cabinet briefing to media on Friday afternoon she said that she stood by New Zealand’s decision to pursue an elimination strategy but acknowledged that that came with its own costs, from job losses to school camp cancellations.
“Covid has taken a toll on so many in so many ways – but it will get better.
“We may not be in the devastating position that much of the rest of the world finds itself in, but an elimination strategy can feel like hard work and it is completely natural to feel fatigued.
“Covid is hard work for everyone. Thank you for pushing through once again.”
Rule breaking under level three, contributing to spread in the Auckland cluster in late February, had been a flashpoint for criticism this week – and sparked calls for the government to do more in terms of community outreach.
Questioned over whether the government had mismanaged any element of its communications around this most recent lockdown, Ardern said she believed that the expectations of New Zealanders were “by and large very well understood”.
Ardern said that she did not believe anyone who broke level-three restrictions set out deliberately to do wrong, but that she had not seen any benefit in continuing a “back-and-forth” over individual cases over this past week.
She added that, throughout New Zealand’s Covid response, there had always been some breaches of the rules. “By and large the country has done exceptionally well – but we’ve never had an experience that’s been perfect.”
New Zealand has reported just over 2,000 cases of the coronavirus and 26 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
