Record numbers of new coronavirus infections have been detected this week in New Zealand.
New Zealand's daily COVID-19 infections have passed 2,000 for the first time since the pandemic began.
On Sunday, health authorities reported 2,522 new community cases of the virus. One hundred people are in the hospital, which is also the highest total of the pandemic, although officials have said none are in intensive care units.
Some of the world's toughest disease-control measures, including border closures, have insulated New Zealand from the worst of COVID-19.
Nevertheless, the prime minister Jacinda Ardern says her country is entering a new phase of the pandemic.
The omicron variant is spreading rapidly, and she is urging more people to get a third vaccine dose.
“Get a booster if you haven’t already. While 1.9 million New Zealanders have had their booster, 1.2 million who are due have not. It is very clear that the job is not done. Omicron is here and increasingly entering our homes. Make your booster the first thing you do to protect yourself and vulnerable people you know from getting the virus,” she said.
Ninety-four percent of eligible New Zealanders have had two shots. About two-thirds have had a booster shot.
Dr. Samantha Marsh, a senior research fellow at the University of Auckland, believes those rates will increase as the virus spreads.
“When omicron really takes hold of New Zealand — in Auckland we are kind of getting there at the moment, but still the rest of New Zealand, you know, they don’t have the case numbers that we have here. New Zealand is very unusual in that we really haven’t seen it up close and personal what huge numbers look like and how devastating that can be, and so I would hope that as that reality hits closer to home we might see an increase in numbers,” she said.
Despite a surge in cases, New Zealand plans to begin a cautious and staged reopening of its borders, which have been closed since March 2020, in a week's time.
A long-held zero-COVID-19 strategy has been abandoned as the South Pacific country of 5 million people confronts the rapid spread of the omicron variant.
It has recorded about 31,000 infections and 53 deaths since the pandemic began.
