Misbah Ali

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden informed on September 6, 2021 that the country will lift its COVID-19 lockdown this week, with only COVID-19 epicentre Auckland to remain under strict stay-at-home orders.

The Prime Minister said that about three million people of New Zealand will no longer be under lockdown as of September 7, 2021 overnight, and schools will reopen on September 9, 2021 for the first time in three weeks.

But she added that Auckland, where the country’s Delta-strain outbreak emerged in August, will remain under strict lockdown for at least another week as the outbreak has not been yet contained in the city of two million.

Ardern said there had been positive progress bringing the numbers of the infections down, but the highly contagious Delta strain was a “game-changer” that meant Auckland’s curbs could not be relaxed too soon.

“We’ve done so well to bring this outbreak under control, level four (hard lockdown) restrictions are working but the job is not done. We’re within sight of elimination but we can’t drop the ball,” she said.

People outside Auckland will move to alert level two on the nation’s four-tier COVID-19 response system.

It means that stay-at-home orders are lifted, but the freedoms enjoyed before the Auckland outbreak emerged will not be fully restored.

Indoor social gatherings will be limited to 50 people, with mandatory mask-wearing and tracer-app scanning in many venues.