New Zealand’s Ardern Says Auckland Retail Can Reopen Next Week

(Bloomberg) -- Retailers in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, will be allowed to reopen next week after being closed for almost three months during a lockdown.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said shops in the city can begin operating from midnight on Nov. 9. Public facilities will also reopen and the number of people who can gather outdoors will increase to 25. However, Auckland will remain at Alert Level 3, meaning many lockdown restrictions will stay in place, as the delta variant of Covid-19 continues to spread.

“These decisions are carefully balanced and allow us to release some of the pressure and fatigue that we know exists in Auckland while we continue to vaccinate,” Ardern told a news conference in Wellington on Monday. “Auckland has given us time, time to vaccinate, and we must take it urgently.”

Retailers in Auckland, with the exception of essential services such as supermarkets and pharmacies, have been closed since the first case of delta was detected in the community in August. Ardern said while Auckland’s lockdown had contained the outbreak and bought the country time to raise vaccination rates, it was not possible to contain delta forever.

The outbreak has already spread to the neighboring regions of Waikato and Northland, and more recently the South Island city of Christchurch. New daily case numbers continue to rise, with a record 162 infections reported Monday. 

Modeling released by the government suggests the outbreak will peak at around 200 new daily cases later this month.

“We will continue to try and extinguish these cases, but I don’t want anyone to be left with the belief that we can keep delta in one place, and one place only, for good,” Ardern said.

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