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Covid 19 coronavirus: Thousands of vehicles turned around at Auckland's borders during level 3

3 minutes to read
Police check vehicles at the Mercer checkpoint at the Auckland-Waikato border last week. Photo / Michael Craig

Police check vehicles at the Mercer checkpoint at the Auckland-Waikato border last week. Photo / Michael Craig

Nikki Preston
By:

Herald reporter based in Hamilton

Almost 2000 vehicles were denied entry through police checkpoints at Auckland's northern and southern boundaries in the past week.

Between 6am on Sunday February 28 and 6am today police stopped a total of 113,212 vehicles at the 10 boundary checkpoints across North and South Auckland, according to the final figures released to the Herald this afternoon.

Of those vehicles only 1.8 per cent were turned around.

Under Auckland's level 3 restrictions only essential travel was allowed in, out and through the Supercity. Anyone who did not meet the criteria was turned away.

Of the 1988 vehicles that were turned away - 558 were from northern checkpoints and 1430 from southern checkpoints.

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All the checkpoints were removed at 6am this morning when Auckland moved to alert level 2 and the rest of the country went to alert level 1.

Police also received a total of 1158 notifications to it's non emergency 105 phone line about possible breaches of alert 3 restrictions in Auckland. The police are redirecting people to its website or the all of Government Covid-19 website after its 105 non-emergency phone line was overwhelmed as people sought clarity over Covid rules - or to report possible breaches. Police shared a message on various NZ Police regional Facebook pages saying the 105 line was experiencing high demand and redirecting people to use the 105 online service where possible. The 105 service was swamped at the start of last week as people sought clarity over Covid rules or to report possible breaches.

"Police would like to thank all residents for their co-operation and compliance during the alert level 3 period," a police spokesperson said.

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However not all were compliant and a police officer was left shaken on Thursday morning after a disqualified driver sped away from a Covid-19 checkpoint at the intersection of Coal Hill Rd and Mangawhai Rd as the officer reached in to take his car keys from the ignition.

Hassan said at the time that it was a reminder that Aucklanders needed to comply with alert level 3 restrictions and that the driver's behaviour was among a number of incidents in Tāmaki Makaurau over the past few days.

It comes after a rocky start to the checkpoints where Aucklanders returning to the city on Sunday faced waits of up to 10 hours to get home.

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