All of New Zealand, South of the Auckland Boundary, will move to Level 3 at 11:59 PM on Tuesday, August 31.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said they’ll review these settings at Cabinet a week later on Monday the 6th of September.

“For those in Auckland and Northland, so from the southern Auckland boundary to the very top of the country, you will remain in level 4.”

“At cabinet, this coming Monday the 30th of August, we will consider how long Auckland and Northland will continue to remain in Level 4 before we review those settings again.”

The Prime Minister said “based on the size of the outbreak, which is larger than August last year and potentially closer in scale to our original outbreak at the beginning of 2020, the number of daily cases we are seeing and the need to see a sustained reduction in cases before moving alert levels, It is likely at this stage, that Auckland will remain at level 4 for a period of a further two weeks. “

“This is so we can get delta under control and reopen fully and safely.”

“We simply can’t do that. If we still have a lot of delta circulating in the community to move safely down, we will need to be confident we’ve stamped it out and have cases contained and isolated. I know there will be a couple of basic questions about these decisions, so let me cover them off quickly.”

Why are we keeping the rest of the country at level 4 for a few extra days, especially the South Island?

The Prime Minister said the first reason is that this will give us the confidence of an almost full 14-day cycle. Since our first case was discovered, especially given we had contacts across all parts of the country and over 300 in the South Island.

“The second reason is that we do have cases in Wellington that while currently contained, we did have contacts being tested over the coming days. As I’ve said, we also have those contacts in the South in that full two-week transmission cycle. Is very very helpful in terms of our confidence. And thirdly we did seen a positive wastewater result in the South Island, namely Christchurch yesterday, as noted by ESA yesterday, it’s likely that this is a result of positive cases that are managed isolation facility but further tests in a few extra days will allow us to better answer that question.

“More of those tests in different catchments are underway as we speak.”