Last week New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern said the arrival of Omicron was not a matter not of if but when. Days later, it arrived. With the highly contagious variant entering Aotearoa, officials say they expect cases to reach over 1,000 a day in the next two weeks.
More broadly, New Zealand is entering a new stage in the pandemic: needing to reckon for the first time with the prospect of widespread Covid infections across the country, having kept the virus at bay for almost two full years.
