The tighter rules – especially the new cap of 50 punters at an indoor venue – have made it particularly hard for businesses, and there is talk of potentially needing to stay at level 2 for months.
It won't feel like it, but may be to Auckland's benefit that the rest of the country has gone first to test-drive what impact the new rules will have on the ability of businesses to keep operating.
Those rules were announced at the last minute and caught businesses out.
The last-minute scramble highlighted again that the Delta outbreak seemed to have caught the Government out. Asked about it this week, Grant Robertson chose to depict it as being adaptable – and changing the rules on the basis of last-minute health advice.
"Adaptable" is another word for on the hop.
In that regard, it should be hoped that planning to handle future outbreaks is done ahead of time – and signalled in advance.
In particular, a clear picture of what would be involved in post-vaccination outbreaks is needed.
The Government is understood to have begun work on developing an entirely new alert levels system for post-vaccination outbreaks.
That is reassuring.
The big question confronting it in that work is what difference a vaccination would make in everyday life, rather than just for international travel.
That is particularly important given repeated warnings that future outbreaks could still result in lockdowns, even with relatively high vaccination numbers.
Those warnings are borne from the impact that Delta is having on countries overseas with high vaccination rates. There is also the reality that a significant portion of the population here will not be able to be vaccinated: not least younger children, for whom there is as yet no approved vaccination.
The promise so far has been that higher vaccination rates would mean lockdowns would not have to be as strict or as broad.
Given that, the Government needs to assess what impact vaccinations will have in determining those future restrictions. There would be a higher risk of non-compliance with restrictions by vaccinated people.
The trouble it will face will be vaccinated people wondering why they cannot do more things than unvaccinated people in the event of an outbreak.
The answer to that is because vaccinated people can still catch and transmit Covid.
In an interview with the NZ Herald earlier this year, Ardern ruled out a system that would give vaccinated people more opportunities than the unvaccinated within our domestic borders.
She was asked after countries in Europe with vaccination rates over 60 to 70 per cent started to re-open restaurants and public venues – but only to vaccinated people.
Last week, Australia's PM Scott Morrison also voiced support for a vaccination pass to offer the vaccinated more freedoms in everyday life.
Rather than stopping everybody going to places where they might spread Covid, the aim is to stop the unvaccinated from going to places where they might catch it.
Any such decision is best coming from the Government, rather than leaving it to businesses themselves to impose "vaccinated customer only" rules. That is not fair on them.
Ardern would still be reluctant – not least because a significant portion of the unvaccinated will be young children who cannot yet get vaccinated.
It would also exclude others, who could not get vaccinated for legitimate reasons, from many elements of ordinary life. And there are civil liberties issues for those who choose not to be vaccinated.
It would more likely to be used as an outbreak measure rather than a permanent measure
Ardern would need to be convinced it would work.
But there was also a time she would never have envisaged locking the entire country up in their homes for weeks on end.
Covid-19 has made a pragmatist out of Ardern.
There are already signs she is budging: Grant Robertson confirmed yesterday such a vaccines pass was under consideration – albeit only in its early stages.
There would be the issue of enforcing it.
However, if the alternative to a system that excludes some is a hard lockdown on everybody, Ardern may find the pressure is too much to push back on.
The Government will also be aware of the impact of lockdowns on its own pocket.
Ardern and Robertson have frequently used the phrase that the best health response is also the best economic response.
But that has also required the Government to drawn down billions in debt, and to fork out billions in wage subsidies and business support to ensure there is an economy.
It worked, but as Robertson said yesterday, the Government cannot continue to subsidise the wage bills of business forever.
The best health response has also proved to be the best political response: at least so far.
But in the long term, that health response was supposed to be vaccinations rather than lockdowns.
And if the economic cost ends up being too much, the political cost will also rise.
