Next week, New Zealand will emerge from one of the most stringent lockdown’s in the western world. Rather than just flattening the COVID-19 infection curve, the country is poised to eradicate it altogether.
After more than a month confined to dry land without being immersed in the salt and sea, New Zealander Zen Wallis says it feels like he’s living in someone else’s body.
“It’s really strange to not go into the water,” the professional surfer told CBC News. “My skin feels different; my hair feels different.”
Surfing has been one of the casualties of New Zealand’s extreme COVID-19 lockdown introduced in mid-March, one of the most stringent virus-fighting regimes anywhere in the world.
Wallis, 28, runs a surfing school in Piha on New Zealand’s North Island, a quick 45-minute drive from the capital Auckland.
Coming at the tail end of the Southern Hemisphere’s summer, he says his classes would normally have been full and he’d have been in water for as long as there was daylight in the sky.
“It was an interesting call to make — to actually make [surfing] criminal,” he said in an interview by Skype, but with the end of the prohibition on surfing and many other activities now just days away, Wallis says he feels the gains New Zealand probably made the ban worthwhile.
“We may be able to open New Zealand back up if we can ‘crush’ this,” he said of the government’s stated goal of eradicating the infection.
Eradicate Covid-19
On Monday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that what New Zealand calls its Category 4 measures — the most intense level — would last until Monday, April 27, after which the country will revert to Category 3, a level with greater freedoms.
“We have done what few countries have been able to do — we have stopped a wave of devastation,” said Ardern, who has received widespread praise both at home and abroad for taking early, decisive action against COVID-19.
“The number of cases that each person with the virus passes it on to is now 0.48, less than half a person each. Overseas, the average is 2.5 people, so we have among the lowest number of confirmed cases per 100,000 people in the world.”
As of Tuesday, the country of five million people had registered 1,445 cases and just 13 deaths, most of them in nursing homes.
The majority of those infected have also now recovered.
For much of March and April, under the Category 4 lockdown, only essential trips to the grocery store and pharmacies were permitted, along with brief trips outside for exercise. Swimming at the beach — and surfing — were not designated as essential activities, and related busi