Covid 19 coronavirus: Wellington's alert level 2 - card spending dropped by $8m

Nurses testing people for Covid-19 at Hataitai Park during alert level 2 in Wellington. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Wellington's six-day stint at alert level 2 saw nearly 2000 businesses apply for the Covid-19 resurgence support payment, totalling more than $5 million.

Just over $2.6 million of this has already been paid out.

The capital moved to alert level 2 last month after a Sydney tourist visited the city and later tested positive.

Between June 23 and June 29, a total of 1911 applications were received from Wellington businesses for the resurgence support payment, with an average of nearly $2700 applied for by each.

Paymark data released this morning shows card spending was down $8 million, or 9.1 per cent during the six days - when compared to the same six days last year.

Spending throughout the other 23 days of June was up 2.4 per cent year on year - although this is below the growth rate experienced by retailers in other regions.

Wellington Chamber of Commerce chief executive Simon Arcus said the figures were a sign of how hard businesses had been hit by the level two restrictions.

"Traffic on the roads is down 14 per cent and Wellington City spending for the first four days is down 14 per cent as compared to 2019.

"So there was an impact on businesses definitely."

He said the impact had been bigger than they may have predicted, for two main reasons.

"First of all it was an onshore Covid issue – a person actually carrying Covid around Wellington, and the second part of that was that it was the Delta variant.

"We think people were a bit more cautious even than usual with this infection."

He believed the nearly 2000 applications would be disproportionately from hospitality, food and beverage businesses, but said the full effects of the restrictions were perhaps yet to be felt.

"When hospitality food and beverage are affected there are flow-on effects to tourism.

"What we saw definitely was a more cautious approach from consumers and I think that will flow through into the figures as we get the full picture."