Skip to main content
Summary Report

7 - Lockdowns Ngā noho rāhui

Home Reports Summary Report Part Two: Lessons learned from Looking Back 7 - Lockdowns

Summary report

Download report 2.2 MB

Introduction | Kupu whakataki

The first reported case of COVID-19 in Aotearoa New Zealand was detected on 28 February 2020, more than two months after the virus was identified in China, and a week or so after small clusters were identified in Europe and the United States. This delay – attributable partly to geographic isolation, and partly to good luck – meant Aotearoa New Zealand had an important opportunity to assess what was happening in other countries before taking action.12

...Cabinet made an informed decision to adopt ’aggressive and effective containment measures’, such as closing the border.

In particular, once COVID-19 started to spread significantly in other countries, decision-makers were able to compare the experience of Italy and parts of the United States (where rapid community transmission had already overwhelmed hospitals and caused many deaths) with that of China, Taiwan and Singapore (where authorities had adopted strong restrictions which somewhat contained the virus).13 On that basis, Cabinet made an informed decision to adopt ’aggressive and effective containment measures’, such as closing the border.14

As part of this approach, Aotearoa New Zealand, like much of the world, went into ’lockdown’ in late March 2020.v However, the rationale for New Zealand’s lockdown – to break chains of transmission – soon diverged from the rationale in most other parts of the world, where lockdowns were used to keep transmission down to an ’acceptable’ level.15 This usually meant a level that did not overwhelm health services.

As the need for such a tool had never been anticipated or prepared for, Aotearoa New Zealand had no apparatus in place for an all-of-society lockdown ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic. The whole public sector – including those working in both frontline and public health roles – was operating without a playbook, as indeed was everyone in Aotearoa New Zealand.

On 23 March 2020, the number of confirmed cases in Aotearoa New Zealand passed 100,16 and the Prime Minister announced that the country would move immediately to Alert Level 3, followed by Alert Level 4 in 48 hours.17 From this point, Aotearoa New Zealand was in ’lockdown’.

“If community transmission takes off in New Zealand the number of cases will double every five days. If that happens unchecked, our health system will be inundated, and thousands of New Zealanders will die...Moving to Level 3, then 4, will place the most significant restrictions on our people in modern history but they are a necessary sacrifice to save lives. ”18

Prime Minister Ardern, 23 March 2020

The Inquiry describes the use of lockdowns in Aotearoa New Zealand and their effects – not only on COVID-19 transmission and cases, but on daily life, access to essential goods and services, work, schools (and other places of learning), employment and more. We describe how agencies and communities everywhere stepped up to mitigate the worst impacts of the lockdowns, especially on those who were most vulnerable. We examined the lockdowns in three distinct stages:

  1. The first national lockdown (Alert Levels 3 and 4) between March and May 2020, which lasted seven weeks.
  2. The series of brief Level 3 lockdowns in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland during late 2020 and early 2021, each lasting from a few days to a few weeks.
  3. The return to Alert Levels 3 and 4 in the second half of 2021, which lasted three weeks for most of the country, but stretched on for several months in Auckland, with shorter regional lockdowns for Northland and Waikato.

We considered what lockdowns achieved as a public health measure, but also their impacts – short-term and more lasting – on people, communities, the economy, education and more.

Note: detailed information about these topics and what occurred during Aotearoa New Zealand’s response to COVID-19, along with our complete assessment, can be found in the corresponding Looking Back chapter in our main report.

Overall, we found that lockdowns were successful for the immediate task at hand. But Aotearoa New Zealand might have been less reliant on lockdowns to achieve elimination had the country benefited from earlier and greater investment in public health capacity (such as contact tracing). The success of the elimination strategy meant people in Aotearoa New Zealand spent less time living under stringent public health and social restrictions than populations in many other countries. At the same time, many people felt that lockdowns were kept in place for too long, particularly the final Delta lockdown (focused on Auckland) of 2021.

In the main report, the Chapter includes short case studies (spotlights) on te Tiriti o Waitangi partnership in action; Life in lockdown; Beginnings and endings in lockdown; the Impact of lockdowns on businesses.

Through the Inquiry’s public submissions process, people told us they agreed with lockdowns being brought in quickly and decisively to slow the spread of COVID-19. People who supported lockdowns told us that it kept people safe, reduced anxiety around catching and passing on the virus, and protected the health system from becoming too overwhelmed.

Those who opposed the use of lockdowns considered that they did more harm than good: people told us they felt lockdowns were too strict, went on for too long and happened too often. We heard that the Auckland lockdowns were particularly hard for those living in the city and in Northland.

For future pandemics, people suggested:

lockdowns should be more flexible, and only used in extreme circumstances.

 

“We went into lockdown swiftly and averted a health crisis that would have been catastrophic.”

“I lost my job in retail three months into the first lockdown. I was luckily able to get the government wage subsidy money and was extremely grateful for this.”

“Locking down a healthy population was bad for the economy, education and mental health.”

“The extended lockdowns in Auckland were particularly crippling […] and the “will they? won’t they?” of watching the daily broadcasts to see whether we might be allowed to leave our homes […] was distressing and farcical.”

Note: this material is taken from the Inquiry’s Experiences Report, which is a summary of the public feedback submitted to Phase One of the Inquiry during early 2024.

1. Lockdowns – in combination with tight border restrictions – proved to be an effective tool for achieving and maintaining Aotearoa New Zealand’s elimination strategy in 2020 and early 2021.

  • Aotearoa New Zealand’s use of lockdowns early in 2020, while stricter than many other countries, worked. Aotearoa New Zealand was able to spend large amounts of time in 2020 free from the restrictions experienced by many other parts of the world.

  • Lockdowns, at least initially, were supported by high levels of trust and social cohesion, strong support from communities, social and economic supports, and clear communication.

2. Aotearoa New Zealand would have been less reliant on using lockdowns to eliminate COVID-19 infection with greater preparation of, and investment in, core public health functions.

  • Decision-makers’ options were initially limited by the capacity and effectiveness of the tools available (such as contact tracing) and how effectively measures such as mask wearing were taken up by the population.

  • We note that some Pacific countries (such as Samoa, Tonga and Tokelau) avoided the need for lockdown measures altogether by closing their borders before any COVID-19 cases had occurred, suggesting Aotearoa New Zealand could benefit from earlier border restrictions (in other words, adopting an exclusion strategy) in a future pandemic if the pathogen is particularly infectious and virulent.

3. Deciding when to introduce, and when to stand down, measures such as lockdowns is extremely challenging and requires difficult trade-offs in the face of uncertainty.

  • Decisions about when to start and end measures such as lockdowns involve weighing up a range of competing considerations – social and economic, as well as public health – and considering impacts across different population groups.

  • During the COVID-19 response, decisions around using lockdowns were informed by a range of advice and evidence, including modelling, that took account of vaccination coverage, use of public health measures, and the strength of testing, contact tracing and isolation systems. The Inquiry has not seen evidence that waning protection from vaccination was included in modelling to inform decisions around when to end lockdowns in late 2021, although it was used in modelling from early 2022.

  • Many members of the public – and some senior ministers – felt that the last Auckland lockdown went on for too long. Our assessment is that the Government’s decision-making on when to end the final Auckland lockdown reflected its judgement that allowing more time for Māori and Pacific communities to reach higher levels of vaccination was justified by the benefits they would gain, in the form of greater protection against the severe impacts of COVID-19.

  • However, we are of the view that other factors such as waning protection and assessments of likely resurgence could have been considered alongside vaccine coverage. For example, we note that lockdowns in the Australian states of Victoria and New South Wales ended earlier and at lower vaccination coverage levels than that at which the Auckland lockdown was relaxed, without any associated increase in case numbers. In a future pandemic we think these considerations should also be included in advice to decision-makers.

4. Some elements of the lockdowns were particularly difficult to implement, especially at short notice.

  • Both regional boundaries and the essential worker framework, while valuable, were hard to implement rapidly and had no prior preparation across the government system. These timing and preparedness issues caused many challenges for businesses, communities and government.

5. Lockdowns had disproportionate impacts on some groups.

  • While students’ education was less disrupted in Aotearoa New Zealand than in most other OECD countries, lockdowns still had a significant and negative impact – particularly for Māori and Pacific students, those from lower socio-economic backgrounds, and students in Auckland.

  • The impacts of repeated lockdowns on Auckland were cumulative and multifaceted, encompassing economic, physical and mental health and wellbeing, educational outcomes, and social cohesion.

6. Efforts by iwi, Māori and communities of all kinds undoubtedly alleviated some potential negative impacts of lockdowns on individuals and groups.

  • Iwi, Māori and many others – neighbourhoods, cultural groups, online groups, non-governmental and community organisations, religious institutions, families, whānau and aiga – stepped up during the first Alert Level 3 and 4 lockdowns to provide essential local leadership, support each other and address local needs. Their pre-existing relationships within their local communities (and, in some cases, with Government) were invaluable in enabling this to happen.

Communities stepped up to provide essential local leadership, support each other and address local needs.

v ’Lockdown’ was not an official legal term but was used by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in a press release announcing the first lockdown (see endnote 15 for details). It emerged in global use early in the COVID-19 pandemic to describe combinations of public health measures that heavily curtailed people’s movement in the interests of stopping the virus. Levels 3 and 4 of New Zealand’s Alert Level System can be understood as ’soft’ and ’hard’ lockdowns, respectively, because they required people to stay at home, closed schools and businesses, and involved heavy restrictions on public gatherings. We use ’lockdown’ to describe these aspects of the response, since they were a defining part of the pandemic experience, and most people remember and refer to them this way.

Previous
Next