Covid Scare in Wellington

Wellington City recently had a Covid-19 scare when a tourist from Australia came down sick immediately after visiting the city for a weekend.

The tourist came to Wellington on Friday night, the 18th of June, and met with friends from Tauranga and Wellington. Because it was raining, they visited several indoor venues, including Te Papa, New Zealand’s biggest museum, and a popular bar.

Because the events were indoors, there was a greater chance of spreading the virus, but the visitor did not know that he had Covid-19. When he got home to Sydney on Monday, he got sick and got tested. The news that he had Covid-19 got to us on Wednesday, and then Wellington went into Alert level 2 until June the 27th, which means that people had to practice social distancing and wear masks. People had to stay in their seats when they went to restaurants, and social gatherings were limited to 100 people.

Some people have criticised the government response, saying that Wellington should have gone into a full lockdown. Thousands of people were at the venues that the sick person visited, and have had to go into self-isolation while they wait to see if they get sick or not. Thousands of people have been tested for Covid-19; on Friday alone, labs processed 3,760 tests.

At this stage, it has been a week, and even though the visitor turned out to have the highly contagious Delta variant of Covid-19, nobody has got sick yet, so we are starting to think that once again, we have been lucky.

Vocabulary