From lockdowns, bubbles and isolation: NZ waves goodbye to the last of the Covid restrictions

Tuesday, 15 August 2023

Then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in 2021 giving a Covid-19 lockdown update in the Beehive Theatrette.

It’s all over. The Covid-19 virus is still in Aotearoa, but the country is waving goodbye to the last of the restrictions.

The week-long Covid isolation period is no more, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced on Monday, kicking in from today.

It ends an almost three-and-a-half year period - 1265 days – where New Zealanders confronted and adapted to living a whole new kind of life, picked up an insatiable appetite for epidemiology, along with an obligation to fight Covid-19 with the team of five million.

February 28, 2020 was the first confirmed case in New Zealand, announced by then-Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern shortly after a tense press conference with her Australian counterpart, then-PM Scott Morrison, over trans-Tasman rights.

New Zealand began the first stages of closing the border earlier in February, while travellers from northern Italy and South Korea were among the first directed to self-isolate for two weeks in early March.

Hearts sunk every time Ardern announced new cases, even worse, new deaths. Then the numbers became higher and higher.

Sir Ashley Bloomfield shot to rock star status, and clear, concise messaging from epidemiologists became the incredibly valuable currency that helped shaped the country’s newly formed vocabulary – PCR tests, RATs, PPE gear, MIQ, close contacts, casual contacts, bubbles and lockdowns.

Remember the two-week isolation period? Remember religiously checking the Covid website to check locations of close contacts? When the whole country closed the borders?

Before, getting into the country was a literal lottery, with a two-week stay at a Covid hotel awaiting anyone lucky enough to bag a spot.

Then-Director-General of Health Sir Ashley Bloomfield and then-PM Jacinda Ardern.

Now, a small box of Covid-19 tests sits to the side of the international arrival gate, if anyone wants one.

Hipkins, who, as the Covid-19 Response Minister, announced many of the restrictions, beamed on Monday delivering the news.

He said there were times, particularly during the peak of the response, that he “longed for this moment”.

“It's been a phenomenal thing. It's probably been the biggest thing that any New Zealand government has grappled with, of this nature and of the scale, for a generation or more.

“It's quite a significant moment.”

It would be the final act in the Covid-19 emergency response, he said, while the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Government’s handling of Covid-19 continues.

“As we draw the final line in our emergency pandemic response, and we mark the incorporation of Covid-19 into the business as usual of our health system, I want to say one last thank you to New Zealanders at home and those spread around the globe,” Hipkins said.

Long Covid is still a major problem for scores of New Zealanders, the health system was short more than 8000 nurses, doctors and other health professionals in July, while some with compromised immunity raised concern over the restriction lift.

There were 5372 new cases of Covid-19 reported over the past week, an increase of 15% from the week prior. Te Whatu Ora reported 22 deaths. To date, there have been 3249 total deaths attributed to Covid-19 since the pandemic began.

The seven-day rolling average of new daily cases was 763, up from 659 last week. There were 171 people in hospital with Covid-19 as of midnight on Sunday, and four in an intensive care unit.