In New Zealand, Life Is Ordinary Again After 101 Days With No Community Spread

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It’s been 101 days since the last case of community transmission of COVID-19 in New Zealand, and life has largely returned to normal. Above: Residents exercise at Hagley Park in Christchurch on Sunday.

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Mark Baker/AP

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«It was a lot of hard work, and we did that at the moment we went into lockdown,» Cox says. By the end of the country’s strict lockdown, all of the clusters had been contained.

Since then, the New Zealand health ministry’s daily report has become remarkably boring amid the global pandemic. Monday’s report: «There are no new cases of COVID-19 to report in New Zealand today. It has been 101 days since the last case of COVID-19 was acquired locally from an unknown source. Two additional cases are reported as having recovered, so there are now 21 active cases of COVID-19 in managed isolation facilities. New Zealand’s total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 remains at 1,219.»

The country’s leaders continue to urge caution. The government is asking people to use the NZ COVID Tracer smartphone app, to log where they’ve been in case contact tracers need to reach them. New Zealanders are encouraged to add masks to their emergency kits in case of a future outbreak, though «there’s no need to use them now,» Bloomfield said in a Facebook Live discussion last week.

With the virus under control in the island nation, Radio New Zealand’s Colin Peacock says life is really quite ordinary.

«Shopping, movies, entertainment, going to bars,» he says. «We can dance as close as we like to each other in nightclubs as late as we like. So everything is just fine in that regard, and business is carrying on as normal.»

New Zealand’s border remain closed to foreign nationals, and Kiwis returning home are forced to follow a strict 14-day quarantine.

The big difference in daily life? «That closed-down border,» Peacock says.

Until the rest of the world gets the virus under control, New Zealand is an island nation in more than one sense.

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