Burgers, fries and coffee: New Zealanders rush for junk food as lockdown eases
28 April, 2020
New Zealanders queued for burgers, fries and coffee takeaway on Tuesday once they were free of a month-long lockdown, which Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern credited with eliminating domestic transmission of the coronavirus.
Around 400,000 people returned to work after Ardern shifted the country's alert level down a notch, loosening a number of the tough movement restrictions that turn off businesses for weeks.
"It’s hard to make clear how good this tastes," Christopher Bishop, a lawmaker, said on Twitter after posting a picture with a eliminate coffee cup.
Long queues of cars snaked up to McDonald's Corp outlets in Auckland and Wellington from the first hours as persons sought a fast food fix.
"We got quarter pounders, Big Macs, drinks ... I've still got two cheeseburgers left but I can't finish them," Tai Perez, who attained a McDonald's outlet in Auckland at 4am, was quoted as saying by the brand new Zealand Herald.
New Zealand's 5 million residents were put through one of the strictest lockdowns on earth in response to the coronavirus pandemic, with Ardern shutting down much of the united states from March 26.
Ardern said those measures had paid off. New Zealand has reported just 1,122 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 19 deaths, among the lowest tallies on the globe.
"We can say confidently that we don't have community transmission in New Zealand. The secret now is to keep up that," Ardern told Radio New Zealand on Tuesday.
There is growing debate among officials and academics about the terminology that needs to be used for New Zealand's status in relation to the coronavirus spread, with some saying "elimination" would not enable recurrent small amounts of cases. They point to the fact that the united states reported five new cases and one death yesterday.
"When I talk about elimination it does not mean zero cases, this means zero tolerance for cases," Ardern said. "The idea of COVID being completely gone, that is eradication - so are there important variations there."
New Zealand is maintaining several social distancing policies regardless of the step down in the alert level with malls pubs, hairdressers and other public shopping areas to remain shut for at least another fourteen days.
Siouxsie Wiles, a microbiologist and associate professor at the University of Auckland, was among those warning the virus could return if lockdown measures were eased prematurely.
"If we turn our backs for one minute, we’ll be in relation to a serious outbreak once more. And we’ve seen this happen overseas," Wiles wrote in a column on the web news site The Spinoff.
Source: www.thejakartapost.com
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