Fresh Zealand tightens commute rules as COVID spreads

Fresh Zealand launched Sunday tighter border restrictions, as new cases of COVID-19 emerged in areas previously free of the coronavirus.

“We’re introducing the requirement for air travellers faded 17 and over, who’re now not Fresh Zealand electorate, to be fully vaccinated to enter Fresh Zealand,” COVID-19 response minister Christ Hipkins acknowledged.

The nationwide flag provider Air Fresh Zealand additionally launched it changed into introducing a “no jab, no hover” policy for passengers on all international flights from February 1.

The country has been hugely a hit at containing the virus—reporting simply 27 deaths in a population of five million—on account of tight border controls and lockdowns, allowing pre-pandemic lifestyles to mostly resume.

But the upped border restrictions near as Hamilton city and neighbouring Raglan town had been put into a five-day lockdown, with simplest crucial circulation permitted, after two of us tested sure.

The cases are now not believed to be connected to the newest outbreak in Auckland, 160 kilometres away.

Town of two million has been in lockdown for nearly about seven weeks as officials grapple with a virulent disease of the extremely transmissible Delta variant that has to this level infected 1,320 of us.

About 2,000 of us attended an anti-lockdown rally in Auckland over the weekend, with Jacinda Ardern describing the demonstration as “a whole slap within the face” for folk that had been abiding by the strict rules banning public gatherings.

“It changed into illegal and additionally it changed into morally immoral,” the high minister acknowledged.

Fresh Zealand is pursuing a “COVID zero” elimination approach.

It had been free of community transmission for six months sooner than basically the most recent Auckland outbreak.

---

---

© 2021 AFP