New Zealand lifts last COVID restrictions after a widely watched pandemic response
New Zealand on Monday removed the last of its remaining COVID-19 restrictions, marking the end of a government response to the pandemic that was watched closely around the world.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said the requirement to wear masks in hospitals and other healthcare facilities would end at midnight, as would a requirement for people who caught the coronavirus to isolate themselves for seven days.
New Zealand was initially praised internationally for eliminating the virus entirely after imposing nationwide lockdowns and strict border controls.
But as the pandemic wore on and more infectious variants took hold, the nation’s zero-tolerance approach became untenable. It eventually abandoned its elimination strategy.
Reflecting on the Labor Party-led government’s response to the coronavirus over more than three years, Hipkins said that during the height of the pandemic, he had longed for the day he could end all restrictions but that now it felt anticlimactic.
He said about 3,250 New Zealanders out of a population of 5 million had died with COVID-19 as a primary or secondary cause — about one-fifth of the mortality rate in the United States.
New Zealand’s government has acknowledged what most other countries did long ago: It cannot completely and permanently rid itself of the coronavirus.
“While there were no doubt fractures in our collective sense of unity, I believe that New Zealanders can be enormously proud of what we achieved together,” Hipkins said. “We stayed home, we made sacrifices, we got vaccinated and there is absolutely no question we saved lives.”
Health Minister Ayesha Verrall said that coronavirus case numbers and hospitalizations were low and had been trending down since June and that New Zealand’s publicly funded health system had faced less disruption from the virus this southern winter.
“We have been able to complete 16,000 more operations than we did last year, and so that is a very good indication our health system is on a much more even keel than it was,” she said.
The announcement comes two months before a general election.
Three helicopter tour operators have pleaded guilty to safety breaches when New Zealand’s White Island volcano erupted in 2019, claiming 22 lives.
David Seymour, the leader of the opposition ACT Party, said the government had been treating people like children for too long.
“They have been happy to impose high costs with little benefit and have taken their sweet time getting around to fixing it,” Seymour said in a statement.
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