Venu Menon
Wellington, August 14,2023
The seven-day isolation period and requirement for visitors to wear masks in healthcare facilities ends at midnight tonight.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins made the announcement at the weekly post-Cabinet press conference today.
The removal of the remaining restrictions marks the final act of the Covid emergency response. “We now await the outcome of the Royal Commission of Enquiry into the lessons learnt,” the prime minister said.
Hipkins said Covid-19 case rates, waste-water levels, and hospitalisations had been trending down since the beginning of June, with reported cases now at the lowest level in 18 months.
New Zealand was recording a significant milestone with “the formal end of what was a uniquely challenging time for the country” and the world.
The PM recalled how the country went into self-isolation after a state of national emergency was declared on 25 March 2020.
“It was an incredibly fearful time for us and for the world, and no one at that time could foresee how things were going to turn out.”
Hipkins pegged the Covid-19 death toll in New Zealand at 2,035, with the virus contributing to the deaths of a further 1,214 people. New Zealand had the lowest rates of deaths and hospitalisations of any OECD country, he noted.
The PM recapped the hardships New Zealanders faced with border closures, lockdowns, and the travel bubble with Australia. “Auckland, in particular, did the heavy lifting for the rest of the country, going through extended lockdowns to stop the spread of the virus.”
By February 2022, almost 230,000 travelers [more than the population of Wellington] had gone through the managed isolation facilities (MIQ), “which kept Covid-19 out of our community or at low levels, and it crucially gave New Zealanders time to get vaccinated.”
“We undertook the fastest and most successful vaccine roll- out in New Zealand’s history, positioning us incredibly strongly when Covid-19 did finally arrive in New Zealand,” Hipkins observed.
Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall, who accompanied the prime minister at the media briefing, noted that people had different levels of vulnerability, adding she understood “why people with disabilities or other medical conditions” may not want the remaining restrictions removed. Recommended procedures would still be followed when people visited aged residential care homes, she said.
Wearing masks would still be encouraged, though not mandated, when people visited hospitals.
Asked about the hardships caused by the MIQ “lottery” system, Verrall said: “ I do note that……there was a court ruling saying you could have had a fairer system, but I note the court didn’t identify what they thought a fairer system was.”
The minister noted that, potentially, “a million people [were] trying to get into the country and we were only ever going to be able to accommodate 4,000 or 5,000 at a time. It was always going to be a collision course that was going to be really challenging.”
Venu Menon is an Indian Newslink reporter based in Wellington
