Wellington: Aucklander returned to nightclubs, cinemas and cafes on Friday as the biggest city of New Zealand came out of pandemic locking after more than 100 days.
Retailers open their doors to vaccinated customers as a country ending locking and moving to ‘traffic light system’ newly assessing areas as red, orange or green depending on the level of exposure to Covid-19 and their vaccination level.
Auckland, the center of the country’s Delta outbreak will start red, making a mandatory face mask and putting limits at meetings in public places.
Bars, nightclubs and restaurants can be open to guests with a vaccine certificate but with a limit of 100 people and 1 meter of social distance.
Outdoor events are permitted.
“I missed him very much, I can’t wait to destroy Guinness and have Boogie,” said a nightclub participant in Auckland.
Along with its geographical isolation, New Zealand imposed several of the most stringent pandemic restrictions among OECD countries by 2020, guarding the country mostly free Covid-19 and helping its economy rise back faster than many of his colleagues.
But it failed to control an outbreak of a very contagious Delta variant this year and shifted to a living strategy with a virus with vaccination and other steps.
About 90% of Aucklander who qualifies are now fully vaccinated.
Auckland’s domestic border association still exists and will subside on December 15 which allows residents to travel throughout the country for Christmas and summer holidays.
With an average of 150 new delta cases reported every week, mostly in Auckland, reopening has raised concerns that Covid-19 will spread faster throughout the country and pose a risk of marginalized Maori communities.
But for now, the cheering business is moving.
“This is a beautiful room we had and it was really good just to be able to open it to the environment again, so it was cool,” Nigel Cottle, the owner of the Auckland-based Cafe ‘Crave’.