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Auckland, March 12, 2021
Auckland will move to Alert Level 1 from midday today, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced.
At a media conference at 11.30am today, Ms Ardern said that the State Cabinet met last night to make a preliminary decision on the Alert Levels.
“In order to confirm our decision today, we wanted three important things to occur – first there were no new community cases overnight,” she said.
The announcement followed six days of Alert Level 2.
All the 15 cases from the February cluster are either in quarantine or recovered, she said and thanked Aucklanders for their cooperation.
Team Effort emphasised
“Covid requires a team effort. If you are not actively scanning in, please. Turn on Bluetooth if you are not using it… businesses… please make QR codes highly visible. Look after one another and enjoy your weekend,” Ms Ardern said.
It has been 14 days since the last community case – a whole transmission cycle. Waiting for more information was why Auckland did not shift Alert Level on Thursday.
“We have actually done something unusual. Normally we lift an order at midnight. Hopefully moving at midday showed some confidence we are moving as fast as possible. The decision yesterday was in principle and depended on today’s test results, “Ms Ardern said and said that she expected that for the most part, the public would appreciate the work the government had done.
Addressing criticism
“If there had been cases today, the government would have had to review its decision making.
For us, it was about seeing the hard data. What we are being criticised for is this assumption that we made a decision and didn’t act on it. In fact, what we did was try and maximise as much as possible, the ability to move early for businesses,” Ms Ardern said.
She denied that the timing had anything to do with her schedule.
Hospitality tense
Meanwhile, Auckland’s hospitality industry was left on tenterhooks last night on the eve of three big days of America’s Cup racing.
It is a busy sporting weekend with America’s Cup events and a Super Rugby Aotearoa match between the Blues and Highlanders at Eden Park scheduled for Sunday. The Auckland Arts Festival also has dozens of shows and events planned through until March 21, 2021.
A move to Alert Level 1 would make a lot of difference, especially for retail and hospitality businesses in the CBD, Chief Executive Nick Hill of Auckland Unlimited, the City Council’s economic and cultural agency said.
Mayor welcomes decision
Mayor Goff welcomed return to Level 1 and renewed his call for priority for Aucklanders in Vaccine rollout.
He said that the government’s decision to return Auckland to Covid-19 Alert Level 1 from 12pm on Friday, March 12, 2021 is great news.
He issued the following Statement:
However, we need to temper celebrations with the awareness that the rampant nature of the virus internationally and the number of returning New Zealanders in quarantine who are testing positive means we cannot rule out further incursions. The strongest protection against community transmission will be the widespread vaccination of New Zealanders.
Priority in Vaccination
With Aucklanders most often the ones forced to live under the restrictions of Level 2 and 3, it makes sense for Aucklanders to get vaccinated after sections of the community most at risk and before the general rollout of the vaccine across the country.
I want health authorities and the government to take the level of risk and the burden carried by this community into account before the general rollout of the vaccine in July.
As New Zealand’s largest city and international border Auckland has significantly more managed isolation and quarantine facilities than the rest of the country combined—nine times as many as Wellington and three times as many as Christchurch.
Auckland is the region most susceptible to another outbreak. We don’t want to face the health risks of a further incursion and we want to avoid the costs imposed on jobs, incomes and business by going into lockdown. I hope these facts are taken into account when the wider rollout is implemented.
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