Alert levels throughout the country will remain unchanged for another couple of weeks, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced today (Friday September 4).

Auckland will remain at alert level 2.5 and the rest of the country at level two until at least 11:59pm Wednesday September 16, she said.

The PM said Cabinet took into consideration the containment of the current COVID-19 wave, the compliance with community restrictions and the cost of the impact of the restrictions, but decided with the transition by Auckland to level 2.5 still being fairly new that lifting the restrictions further now would be premature.

After only five days at alert level 2.5, the PM said “we don’t yet know fully what the impact of our level shift will have been in Auckland and beyond. It is simply too early for us to know just yet”.

She also said modelling from this cluster had shown the greatest period of spread of COVID-19 was over the weekends, “the times when we gather and socialise”.

The containment of the South Auckland cluster meant there was no indication that Auckland needed to go back to level three, she said, but “caution is still very much required”.

She referred to one case in Aucklandwhich, while it was genomically linked to other cases, contact tracers had been unable to determine the person-to-person link to a cluster.

“That means there could be other people we are missing,” she said.

With the freedom of movement for Aucklanders under alert level 2.5 the risk of the virus spreading throughout the country was still too great to permit the rest of the country to relax to a lower alert level, she said.

“Even if cases had stopped appearing altogether… there’s still a chance of spread outside of Auckland. If that does happen, level two settings lessen the impact of any spread.”

“Lockdown must always be our last resort. We do not want Auckland, or indeed the rest of the country, pinging in and out of level three.”

Cabinet will review today’s decision on Monday September 14. 

PHOTO: RNZ