Auckland locked down longer than advised, Royal Commission on Covid finds
Tuesday, 10 March 2026
Decision-makers kept Aucklanders in a level 4 lock down longer than health officials advised was necessary, the Royal Commission says.
The commission has released the final report of its inquiry into the Government’s pandemic response in 2021 and 2022.
It interrogated ‒ among other things ‒ decisions about lockdowns, with a particular focus on the extended Auckland and Northland lockdowns.
The commission found that on September 12 , 2021 the Ministry of Health recommended Auckland move down to Alert Level 3 four days later.
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This was off the back of a public health risk assessment that indicated cases were trending downwards in the super city.
Then Director-General of Health Sir Ashley Bloomfield agreed with the recommendation on the proviso it was “dependent on nothing unexpected arising from testing on case investigations in the interim”.
Then Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins noted the director-general’s recommendation in a paper he took to Cabinet the following day.
There, he raised the option of holding Auckland at Alert Level 4 until September 21 to be more confident there was no undetected community transmission ‒ and recommended Cabinet take this course.
“The Minister noted a risk that easing restrictions and then tightening them again could be more detrimental in terms of social licence, mental health, pressures on at-risk communities and economic costs than delaying a move to Alert Level 3,” the commission’s report said.
Cabinet agreed with the minister’s recommendation to keep Auckland at Alert Level 4 for a further week.
Another public health risk assessment on September 19 indicated the outbreak was confined to identified communities and there was a medium risk of community transition.
The Ministry of Health ‒ once again ‒ recommended Auckland move to Alert Level 3 on September 21 and Cabinet agreed to this the following day.
By this point, Auckland had spent five weeks at Alert Level 4.
The commission also looked at the decisions around Auckland’s regional boundary that was stood up a second time in late 2021 after the Delta outbreak.
It required those passing through to either be vaccinated or return a negative Covid-19 test within 72 hours of exit.
The commission found Cabinet decided to keep the boundary in place until January 16, 2022 against advice from officials that the restriction was “not necessary or practical”.
National issues a please explain
National’s Simeon Brown said Hipkins must explain why he kept Auckland in lockdown for longer than health officials thought necessary.
“Aucklanders endured some of the longest Covid-19 restrictions in the world. Businesses wondered if they would survive, parents had to explain to their kids why they couldn’t see their grandparents, and funerals were held without the people who should have been there.
“Aucklanders accepted those sacrifices because they trusted the restrictions were necessary. Chris Hipkins stood up and told them he was following the health advice. He wasn’t.”
Brown said the same applied to the Auckland boundary.
'They were putting options to Cabinet which were not backed up by advice.“
The Post asked Hipkins’ office why he had ignored health officials’ advice, if he accepted Aucklanders endured restrictions for longer than necessary and if in hindsight, he would have done anything differently.
A spokesperson contested that Hipkins had ignored official advice.
The spokesperson said Cabinet papers ‒ generally written a week in advance ‒ contained preliminary advice and the director-general would give the final public health risk assessment the day Cabinet met.
“The most up to date information often came in a couple of hours before Cabinet,” they said.
“The director-general’s post-Cab transcript from that day sets out his advice: ‘So our view, and our advice, is that another week in alert level 4 in Auckland gives us our best chance to really finish the job off here.’”
Heading into Parliament on Tuesday morning, Hipkins said he had made his view clear for some time that the Auckland lockdown decisions could have been handled better.
“There are always going be things that you can look back on after two years of reflection and say, with more reflection, more time to consider it, more evidence, could we have done things differently? Yes, of course.”
Sir Ashley Bloomfield told The Post he would not be making any comment in response to the report.
Other inquiry findings
The final report also found vaccine mandates were in some cases introduced too slowly, lasted too long, and went too far ‒ with the employment and wage impacts on those who declined the vaccine foreseeable but poorly monitored.
It said the PCR testing system was overwhelmed in early 2022, partly because the Government was too slow to approve rapid antigen tests and allow firms to import their own.
The economic response ‒ including quantitative easing ‒ had costs larger than anticipated, leaving New Zealand in a weaker position for future shocks.
And communications about vaccine risks had shortfalls in clarity that left patients poorly informed, the Commission found.