New Zealand History/New Zealand During the COVID 19 Pandemic and the 2020 Recession (2019-?)

New Zealand and the Covid-19 Pandemic

Background

In 2020 on the 11th of March, the World Health Organization declared the 'Novel Coronavirus' to be a pandemic, after it was found in a cluster of people in Wuhan, Hubei, People's Republic of China and reported to the WHO on 31 December 2019. On the 14th of March, WHO officially names the Coronavirus 'Covid-19', despite many countries independently recognizing it as a Pandemic prior.

The Timeline

New Regent Street in Christchurch, empty by late March 2020.

- On the 28th of February, 2020, New Zealand Confirmed its first official case of the Coronavirus, COVID-19.

- 17th of March,2020 Jacinda Adern Announces that schools are 'the safest place for children's to be', and that schools will be exempt from 500+ Mass gathering ban.

- On 21st of March, 2020, Jacinda Adern, Prime Minister of New Zealand introduced the 'Alert Level' System. This was used to indicate the situation of the Pandemic within New Zealand. Each region had its own alert level based on the intensity of the Spread. The Levels could change accordingly to the situation.

- On the 23rd of March, 2020, Two suspected Community spread cases were reported. Jacinda Adern announced that All New Zealand would enter level 3 effective immediately. Schools were to shut down for four weeks, contrary to the Prime Ministers Statement of Schools being the safest place to be

- Three Days later, on the 25th of March, 2020, a State of Emergency was declared and New Zealand Entered Level 4 at 11:59 pm. No non Essential services were allowed to operate and everyone was to stay indoors, only to leave if to gather Essential goods. School was closed.

- 4th of April, 2020 The Government Implements Seven New Rules on the COVID-19 Outbreak.

- New Zealand Achieves over 1000 cases on the 5th of April, 2020

- New Zealand Begins to Ticket those who refuse to obey their water restriction laws on the 5th of April, 2020

Seven New Rules were put in place by the NZ Government:

4th of April, 2020 - Everyone in New Zealand is to be isolated or quarantined at their current place of residence except as permitted for essential personal movement;

• Exercise is to be done in an outdoor place that can be readily accessed from home and two-metre physical distancing must be maintained;

• Recreation and exercise does not involve swimming, water-based activities (for example, surfing or boating), hunting, tramping, or other activities of a kind that expose participants to danger or may require search and rescue services;

• A child can leave the residence of one joint care-giver to visit or stay at the residence of another joint care-giver (and visit or stay at that residence) if there is a shared bubble arrangement;

• A person can leave their residence to visit or stay at another residence (and visit or stay at that residence) under a shared bubble arrangement if:

• One person lives alone in one, or both, of those residences; or

• Everyone in one of those residences is a vulnerable person.

Summary

New Zealand experienced the initial outbreak as one of the later countries, meaning that they experienced their outbreak and community spread a while after the majority of the World Community. The Government Imposed strict sanctions against the People's Republic of China to prevent the spread of the disease into New Zealand. New Zealand declared its first case at the end of February and gradually followed the world in its 'tenfold' increase. The New Zealand Government slowly changed it policy and wording from preventing it from entering the country, to 'Flattening the Curve', from trying to completely eradicating the disease altogether. The Government quickly implicated almost Authoritarian rule, punishing those who disobeyed. The New Zealand Government followed the lead of the likes of China, Japan and Korea and attempted to eliminate the disease. Many New Zealand citizens were fined for surfing, swimming, hunting and fishing. The New Zealand Prime Minister described some of the cases as 'Some I would charitably describe as idiots.'.

Long Term Effects

Because of the restrictions put in place by the government to slow the spread of COVID, no non-essential businesses were to operate. Thus a large majority of businesses in New Zealand were unable to make money. This required the government to give huge amounts of money to the public, effectively making a universal income. The Governments policy of preventing businesses' from firing their employees, meant that the Government gave the money to businesses' owners so that they could pay there employees, even though none of them were capable of work.

Places of Worship all across New Zealand were prevented from meeting, so many of them put there services online. All students had to learn online, and vast Infrastructure of digital learning were created.