Nations from New Zealand to Cuba closed borders promptly with strict quarantine rules, but the UK won’t admit its ‘serious mistake’
Island nations have an advantage when it comes to stopping travellers importing disease, be it Covid or other infections.
Seas are usually harder to cross than land, and beaches are easier to police. There are no cross-border towns, and fewer ways to sneak over frontiers.
Continue reading...Twelve spread in community while 13th emerged in a quarantined returning traveller, say authorities; PM Ardern due to decide on election
New Zealand on Sunday reported 13 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus for the last 24 hours, as the country’s first outbreak in months continued to grow.
All but one of the new cases were from community transmission and appeared to be linked to a cluster in Auckland where the most recent outbreak started, said Ashley Bloomfield, the New Zealand director general of health. The 13th was a traveller who returned from abroad and was in managed quarantine.
Continue reading...The international news looked like a terrible movie – but then we were reminded that life can change so much in a short amount of time
There is an added level of anxiety when you live with your stubborn 60-year-old father with underlying health problems. Add a deadly virus to the mix and your anxiety is on the verge of daily tears.
“I’ve been working hard since I was 15,” my dad tells me as he leaves to work the Wednesday morning of lockdown.
Continue reading...New Zealand has reported 13 new cases of coronavirus, with two cases emerging from Auckland where the country’s outbreak began. The two cases occurred in the Waikato town of Tokoroa, 125 miles south of New Zealand’s biggest city, and were linked to the Auckland outbreak, bringing the number of cases in the cluster to 29. One person is being treated in hospital.
The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said Auckland would remain in lockdown for an additional 12 days as health workers try to contain the 'perimeter' of the outbreak, the source of which remains a mystery. She said a North Island-wide lockdown was not being considered
Continue reading...Cabinet to meet at 3pm to discuss Auckland lockdown as health minister Chris Hipkins says city not yet looking at moving from level three to four
New Zealand is not yet looking at a level 4 lockdown, because the rising number of Covid-19 cases are all related to a single cluster, the health minister has said.
Chris Hipkins told Radio NZ that more than one cluster would have to be circulating for the country to rise to level 4 restrictions, and so far there was no evidence of that, though more cases from the same cluster had emerged overnight.
Continue reading...Shops start stockpiling and charities helping with financial hardship expect flood of calls as PM warns outbreak will get worse
“I’m not afraid because I’m taking precautions,” says Nadeep Singh, a travel agent in Papatoetoe, the South Auckland suburb that has reportedly sparked a return to lockdown and a pivotal change in the country’s battle with the pandemic.
His business was closed to customers but Singh was working “flat out” – alone in his locked office – getting refunds for clients who are now unable to take the trips they had booked with him.
Continue reading...New Zealand leader has said Auckland’s Covid-19 outbreak will get worse before it gets better, and warned of extended lockdowns after the country reported the first new cases in 102 days without community transmission. Ardern stressed New Zealand’s approach of going hard early remained their best chance of slowing the spread and urged caution over growing misinformation around coronavirus
Continue reading...As coronavirus case numbers soar, the state prepares to host Rimpac, the world’s largest international maritime military exercise
In a year when the coronavirus has caused multinational war games to be conducted virtually or canceled, the world’s largest international maritime military exercise begins in Hawaii next week.
The Rim of the Pacific (Rimpac) war games, which run through the end of August, come as Hawaii struggles to contain community spread of the coronavirus amid what has become the highest reproduction rate in the country.
Continue reading...Jacinda Ardern sound ominous tone, with expectation of a long lockdown for the country’s biggest city
Covid-19 may have been circulating in New Zealand’s biggest city for weeks, the country’s top health official has said, as 13 new community cases were confirmed – all linked to the four cases announced on Tuesday.
The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said the growing cluster in Auckland, now totalling 17, “would get worse before it gets better” in the city of more than 1.4 million people.
Continue reading...France cancels marathon as cases pick up; WHO warns displacement of people in Beirut risks accelerating spread; four new cases in Auckland
Jordan will close its only land trade border crossing with Syria for a week after a spike in Covid-19 cases coming from its northern neighbour, officials said.
They said the interior minister’s decision to close the main Jaber border crossing would come into effect on Thursday morning.
Britain’s NatWest is cutting at least 500 jobs across its retail business and closing one of its remaining offices in London as banks press on with cost-cutting in the face of a wave of expected loan losses due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The state-backed bank is finalising a voluntary redundancy round targeting cutting 550 full-time equivalent roles across its branches and ‘premier banking’ premium service, union Unite told Reuters.
Tens of thousands of people working for banks have risen to the challenge that the pandemic created. The banks’ response should not be a repeat of the austerity measures that we saw after the financial crisis.
Continue reading...Coronavirus restrictions have been reintroduced across New Zealand after four new Covid-19 cases were diagnosed in Auckland
Continue reading...The PM promised transformative government, but has so far largely maintained the status quo
Jacinda Ardern was travelling in a taxi in July 2017, two months before the election that would make her prime minister, when arguably the most important message in her nine-year parliamentary career came through. Labour’s poll results were crashing, the message said, and the party leader – the austere Andrew Little – was considering stepping down. Would Ardern, the then deputy leader, consider stepping up?
In the following days calls went back and forth. The party activists (and MPs at risk of losing their seats) were in the pits, and Little told the country’s leading current affairs show resigning had crossed his mind. From that admission, the poll numbers could only fall further. The Greens were at 15% , sucking up votes to Labour’s left while the conservative National party was polling in the mid-to-high 40s, maintaining an iron grip on the centre right.
Continue reading...The prime minister is pitching a mix of steady leadership and big-spending policies to voters after a world-leading coronavirus response
On her first public outing since launching her party’s election campaign the day before, New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, spent Sunday morning at a farmers’ market in central Auckland where she walked among friends, posed for selfies and did her vegetable shopping.
Ardern is riding high in the polls – as is the Labour party – on the back of her stewardship of the country’s Covid-19 response. Her strong position has been aided by troubles within the opposition National party, which is heading into September’s election with its third leader in as many months.
Continue reading...Nation is facing shortage of shearers for its 68 million sheep as hundreds are barred from taking their usual trip across the Tasman Sea
It’s a tradition that stretches back decades. Every year, hundreds of New Zealanders fly in to Australia for the spring shearing season – a huge mobilisation of workers essential to the success of the nation’s wool industry.
In dusty sheds on outback farms they join up with local shearers and, between them, relieve five million sheep of their fleeces over eight weeks.
Continue reading...The New Zealand politician has swapped twerking on TV for a more serious policy agenda. As the election looms, it seems to be working
He went viral in an awkward campaign video that featured him repeatedly saying “hi” – with an emotionless, thousand-yard stare – at famous spots in his constituency. He twerked merrily on Dancing with the Stars wearing neon Lycra. He once proclaimed – with unintentional double entendre – in a news interview about national flags, that “the French, for instance, love the coq.”
That was the old David Seymour. The New Zealand lawmaker is the leader and sole member of parliament for ACT – a minor, libertarian party that has at times in its history been plagued by the inadvertent comedy of its eccentric members. The 37-year-old wears a sober suit and a quiet, serious demeanour when he meets the Guardian at his parliamentary office in Wellington.
Continue reading...Canada’s Hell’s Basement and a shop in Wellington both thought the word ‘huruhuru’ meant ‘feather’ – they were wrong
A Canadian brewery and a leather store in New Zealand have found themselves in a hairy situation after using te reo Māori to unwittingly name their respective brands after pubic hair.
Canadian brewery, Hell’s Basement, called its New Zealand Pale Ale Huruhuru, while a shop in the New Zealand capital, Wellington, gave its entire outlet the name.
“Some people call it appreciation, I call it appropriation,” te reo Māori exponent and TV personality Te Hamua Nikora said on Facebook, after explaining that most Māori would use the word “huruhuru” as a reference to pubic hair.
Related: 'Hello, death': Coca-Cola mixes English and Māori on vending machine
Continue reading...Hundreds of thousands want more work, and the drop in hours worked – largely as a result of coronavirus – is the biggest in 30 years
New Zealand’s unemployment rate has implausibly fallen to 4.0% in the June 2020 quarter, presenting a strong picture of the labour market even as the Covid-19 pandemic takes an axe to the global economy.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that this announcement is a sign of good news. Instead, the release of June’s labour market statistics presented a still-sobering view of the country’s economy.
Continue reading...Spooked by outbreaks in Australia and Hong Kong, authorities are urging ‘constant vigilance’
Customers stream into a central Wellington cafe, past a QR code posted on the door that allows people to check in on the New Zealand government’s Covid-19 tracing app. None pause to pull out their phones. Down the footpath outside, crosses of tape – denoting physical distancing measures for shoppers that ended months ago – feel like a reminder of a bad dream.
New Zealand has attained the status of one of the world’s safest countries when it comes to the coronavirus; there is no known community transmission in the country and life has largely returned to normal. But with one eye on nations where the virus was once quashed before spiralling out of control again, officials and the government have changed their language in recent days in order to fight a new battle – this time against complacency.
Continue reading...Data shows jobless rate at an eye-popping low of 4% after strict lockdown, but underemployment is higher
Figures showing joblessness in New Zealand has fallen during the coronavirus pandemic have been welcomed by the government and provoked shock and sharp scepticism from economists.
The government agency Statistics New Zealand on Wednesday produced an eye-popping figure of 4% unemployment for the three months to the end of June, down from 4.2% last quarter – before coronavirus restrictions took hold.
Continue reading...New research has found extreme melting of the country’s glaciers in 2018 was at least ten times more likely due to human-caused global heating
Twice a year, glaciologist Lauren Vargo and her colleagues set up camp beside two small lakes close to New Zealand’s Brewster glacier. Each time the trek to carry the measuring stakes takes a little bit longer as the glacier’s terminus gets further away.
Dr Vargo, a native of Ohio now working at the Antarctic Research Centre at the Victoria University of Wellington, is studying New Zealand’s glaciers from the air and on the ice.
Continue reading...