The vaccine rollout is aiming to reach 2 million Kiwis within four months with people at higher risk if they catch Covid-19 being the next in line behind border and healthcare workers.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's Cabinet is yet again poised to make the call as to whether Auckland is ready to move down alert levels and join the rest of the country at level 1.
Ministers are meeting later this afternoon to make the call and Ardern will announce the decisionat midday tomorrow.
But Aucklanders have cause to be optimistic, if Ardern's comments last Friday are anything to go by.
"Cabinet will review this decision [alert level] at the end of next week (tomorrow), with a view to moving Auckland to level 1 at the start of the weekend, if we are in a position to do so."
Since she made those comments, there have been no community cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand.
This has come as welcome news to the director general of health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield.
As has been the case at every other Cabinet meeting where shifting alert levels was on the agenda, Bloomfield will be providing ministers with his recommendation.
He has been coy on telling media what that recommendation will be – saying that this is between him and Cabinet until the decision is made.
But there are a number of factors that would no doubt give him optimism that Auckland is ready to go into alert level 1.
The main one being the fact there hasn't been a single Covid community case since February 28.
That's the same day Ardern announced that Auckland was going into alert level 3 for a week.
The person who tested positive that day was an MIT student who went to the gym after their test. They had also been out in the community when they should have been isolating at home.
This is what worried Ardern – a major factor behind the new lockdown was the fact that a contagious person had been out in the community.
"There were a large number of exposure events which posed a significant risk of spread," Ardern said last Friday.
Because of this, there was a testing blitz in Auckland.
In the week the city was at level 3, a "significant proportion" of the roughly 50,000 Covid-19 tests taken were in Auckland.
Anyone with symptoms was asked to take a test but a significant focus for health officials was on the Hunter's Plaza gym and MIT – places where the last community case spent time.
Despite hundreds of contacts, and close contacts, being tested and told to isolate not a single new community case was detected.
There was a slight blip in the past week - one border-related case where an aircrew member was likely exposed to the virus overseas and tested positive as part of routine testing.
But that was not treated as a community case and they were quickly put into quarantine.
Bloomfield even went as far as tracking down people who were dragging their feet when it came to getting tests and making them do so.
When announcing that Auckland was moving back into level 2 last Friday, Ardern said the lack of community cases was a major reason for the move down alert levels.
Another factor ministers will be looking closely at is the level of testing in Auckland.
Lots of testing means there is less of a chance that Covid-19 could be undetected in the community.
