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Auckland’s almost-four-month lockdown, in numbers
Stewart Sowman-Lund
7-9 minutes
With Aucklanders waking up to their first day of relative freedom since August, Stewart Sowman-Lund crunches the numbers on the country’s longest lockdown.
Today marks the first day of the traffic light framework, with Auckland – and the rest of the country – moving into the “new normal”. It’s a lot like the old normal except vaccine passes and masks have become as important as keys and wallets when leaving the house.
It’s taken a long time to get here, for Auckland especially. On the afternoon of August 17, a single case of the delta variant was detected in the community. It plunged the entire country back into a strict level four lockdown, with Auckland remaining under at least level three restrictions – meaning work from home if you can, no restaurants, no movies, no heaps of other stuff – ever since.
In celebration of a return to some form of normality, and as a way of putting the past few bleak months behind us, here’s the lockdown broken down into numbers: an easily digestible record of what will hopefully be New Zealand’s final Covid lockdown.
107
The number of days Auckland spent under delta restrictions
The first community case of delta was announced on the afternoon of August 17. It was confirmed in a brief press release from the Ministry of Health: “A positive case of Covid-19 has been identified in the community early this afternoon and is now under investigation,” read the email.
“Shit”, the entire country said in unison.
15
That’s how long lockdown has been, in weeks
It almost feels… longer to see it written out this way. Remember how long a term at school used to feel? Those were shorter. Remember how long the summer holidays used to be as a kid? Those were shorter too. This lockdown has been soooo loonnggg.
2,568
That’s how long it’s been, in hours
Weirdly, this feels like less time to me. But to put it another way: you could have watched the Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King – a famously too-long movie – about 780 times during lockdown. So, yeah, it was pretty bloody long.
14
How many days the entire country spent at level four
After we all shifted into lockdown on August 17, all of the country south of Auckland shifted into alert level three on August 31.
35
How many days Auckland spent at level four
It took until September 21 for Auckland to move out of level four and down into level three. Auckland would then spend a fortnight at level three, just over a month at level three (step one) and then another month at level three (step two). It got confusing.
8,745
The number of Covid-19 cases in the delta outbreak
Overall, New Zealand has had almost 12,000 confirmed and probable cases of Covid-19 across both years of the pandemic, both in the community and in managed isolation. The majority of those have come in the past three months and have been in the community. Even more came after the move out of alert level four in Auckland and the bleak reality is that this number will keep climbing long after lockdown has ended.