The largest city in New Zealand has been in partial one week lockdown since the 28th February. This happened as there were new cases found in the Papatoetoe High School in Auckland. The level 3 lockdown made it so that most work places and schools closed except for the children that cannot be supervised at home but apart from Auckland the rest of the country is in a level 2 lock down.
When Monday rolled around there tens of thousands who had tested and 15 cases were identified with a link to the cluster but the origin of the cluster is still not found. On the 14th of February was when the first 3 cases were identified. There was a suspicion that the virus was brought from abroad but nothing has been confirmed yet.
The growth of this cluster was avoidable if the lockdown had not ended and the government had listened to the epidemiologist and other medical field experts. Auckland University professor Des Gorman said the lockdown should have been extended for two more weeks. He and epidemiologist Rod Jackson both said in media interviews that business interests were being prioritized over public health.
To avoid the government from getting called out by the media Prime Minister Jacinda Arden started pointing fingers to the mayor and other officials as to who broke the rules and started the blame game. The Prime Minister then went on to tell the media that she was feeling frustrated with a woman known as Case L, who had just tested positive for COVID-19 after going to work at a KFC outlet in Botany Downs on February 22. Arden was hypocritical when she stated that she didn’t want to create an environment where people did not want to get tested.
In the past year the Arden government has been on glory with media crowning them as the international model for handling the pandemic so well with the strict lockdown they had in March and April 2020 ad stating that this was the sole reason that there were only 26 death because of the virus. But since of last April the government has eased the restrictions earlier than the experts advised and is now facing the repercussions of that.
The healthcare workers and health care experts have made it a point of concern to voice out their opinions on the condition that are managed in isolation and quarantine. Hotels that have been repurposed to accommodate people returning from overseas for a two-week period of isolation. Many of these centres are understaffed, and lack the ability to enforce proper social distancing and ventilation. Apart from the above there is another facto with this outbreak and that is the intense economic pressure that is being faced by workers and also small businesses in the south of Auckland.
