Down One Level

As of 11:59pm last night, all of New Zealand apart from Auckland and Northland went down to Covid Alert Level 3. Auckland and Northland remain at Level 4 whilst the current Delta variant outbreak is contained, as they are still reporting new cases daily. This is largely as a result of the delay in testing and getting results. Unfortunately, the instruction to “self-isolate at home” if you have the disease is impractical in many households where multigenerational families all live in cramped conditions, so once one person gets it, the chances are the whole household will eventually become infected.

 

Level 3 allows the opening of take-away food for contactless delivery and pick-up. I had high hopes of being able to get back into our Loggy B’s ordering for LB At Yours, but could find no mention of it on their website…so I emailed them, and they replied that they’re not doing it this time. Their logic is, presumably, that we’re expecting Level 3 to only last a week before being reduced to Level 2, at which point they’ll be able to open up with distanced tables. This is in marked contrast to last time, when we didn’t know how long Level 3 would last (it turned out to 16 days). The review for this time around is on 6^th September, and with no new cases reported in Wellington since the weekend, and the expectation of no new cases in the community, it seems likely that we’ll go to Level 2 at that time. All the Wellington cases reported so far have been linked to the Auckland outbreak, and subsequently travelled to Wellington, and infected family members here.

I also took a look at The Larder’s offerings on their website, but when I looked in the morning they only had coffees. Since then they’ve updated their website, but I’d already put in my order for Gorilla Burger. We’ll give The Larder a try tomorrow – they’ve got quite a wide selection.

Other than that, Level 3 looks much the same as level 4. We can, theoretically, go swimming, surfing or paddleboarding, but I don’t think we’ll be doing any of those just yet. Quiz will continue to be online for at least one more week, but maybe by mid-September we’ll be back at the Old Bailey.