Wellington Feb 8 (BNA): Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Tuesday said in her first parliamentary address that the COVID-19 pandemic will not end with the Omicron variant and New Zealand will have to prepare for more variants of the virus this year. 2022.
Ardern’s warning came as hundreds of protesters gathered outside Parliament House in the capital, Wellington, demanding an end to coronavirus restrictions and vaccine mandates, Reuters reported.
“Mr. Speaker, expert advice is that Omicron will not be the last swing we will face this year,” Ardern told lawmakers in the speech, which was broadcast live.
“It’s not over. But that doesn’t mean we can’t move forward. We keep making progress. That’s how we are,” she said.
The Ardern government has imposed some of the harshest pandemic restrictions in New Zealand over the past two years, as the government has tried to keep the coronavirus at bay.
The policies helped keep infection and death rates low. New Zealand has a population of five million, and the number of confirmed cases of the new coronavirus in New Zealand has reached about 18,000 cases so far, and 53 deaths.
But it also angered the many who faced endless home isolation, and the tens of thousands of New Zealand expats who were cut off from their families back home as borders remained closed. The measures have also been devastating to businesses that depend on international tourists.
Ardern’s approval ratings plummeted in a public 1News Kantar poll released last month, as the public slashed them due to delays in vaccinations and removal of restrictions.
Hundreds of anti-vaccine mandates and anti-government protesters gathered outside Parliament demanding an end to all restrictions imposed on the pandemic, part of a series of protests organized in recent months.
The government said last week that the country would reopen its borders to the rest of the world in phases by October only. Read more
Omicron cases in the country have been rising steadily since some social distancing measures were recently relaxed. New Zealand recorded the largest number of cases in a single day ever, with 243 cases on Saturday.
Ardern told Radio New Zealand that the country’s Omicron peak could be in March with daily cases ranging between 10,000 and 30,000.
MI