Wellington, New Zealand/Melbourne, Australia
Reuters
The mayor of New Zealand’s biggest city, Auckland, said on Monday that its residents should be prioritised for vaccines, after it was thrown into its fourth lockdown over the weekend costing millions of dollars a day.
The seven-day lockdown of the population of nearly two million was prompted by the case of a person who had been infectious for a week but not in isolation.
A rainbow appears on the Auckland skyline featuring Sky Tower in New Zealand, on 8th July, 2017. PICTURE: Reuters/Jason Reed/File Photo
The lockdown led to several major sporting and cultural events being cancelled or postponed in Auckland.
It also caused traffic chaos over the weekend, with travellers stuck at city checkpoints for up to 10 hours trying to get to their Auckland homes.
Auckland loses an estimated 200 jobs and more than $NZ30 million per day under level 3 restrictions, Mayor Phil Goff said in a statement.
“We need the vaccine roll-out to be prioritised in Auckland to help avoid future lockdowns, protect jobs and incomes, and ensure Auckland can play its role in supporting the national economic recovery,” said Goff.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday that the latest COVID-19 case had made “multiple mistakes” including making contact with an infected family. The person is said to have visited public venues even after taking a COVID test.
“It has had devastating consequences, no question,” Ardern told Newshub’s The AM Show.
But it was up to the police to decide if any action would be taken against the person, she said.
“People do dumb things but we’re not going to get through this if people pillory them to the point they do not tell the truth,” she added.
The lockdown, with Level 3 restrictions, allows people to leave home only for essential shopping and essential work. Public venues will remain closed.
New Zealand, one of the most successful developed nations in controlling the spread of the pandemic, has seen just over 2,000 cases of the coronavirus and 26 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Australia received 300,000 doses of the AstraZeneca PLC vaccine on Sunday, more than doubling the amount of all vaccines shipped to the country so far and allowing the government to ramp up its COVID-19 immunisation drive.
Mass vaccinations for Australia’s 25 million people began on Monday after the arrival of a first batch of more than 142,000 doses of the Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE vaccine.
“We will now be able to scale up the vaccination rollout to our priority groups, including our most vulnerable Australians and to our frontline border and health workers,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in a statement.
Up to four million Australians are expected to be inoculated by March, with Morrison being among a small group receiving the first round of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
Most people will be vaccinated with the University of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. The weekly number of administered doses is expected to reach one million by the end of March when CSL Ltd begins to locally produce 50 million of the AstraZeneca doses.
On Sunday, there were no new cases of the coronavirus recorded across Australia, the 30th such day so far in 2021. There have been no related deaths this year.
Australia has fared better than most advanced economies thanks to swift border closures, high community compliance with public health measures and aggressive testing and tracing. It has reported fewer than 29,000 coronavirus infections and 909 COVID-19 deaths.
A February Ipsos poll conducted with the World Economic Forum in 15 countries showed that about three-quarters of Australians intend to take a COVID-19 vaccine.
On Saturday, about 200 people protested the vaccination drive in front of the office of Health Minister Greg Hunt. Hunt said on Sunday that some of the people opposing vaccinations were spreading “false and clearly irresponsible” views.
“Australians have put their shoulders to the cause,” Hunt said about the people who got vaccinated. “The enthusiasm with which it has been taken up is a tribute to Australians.”
