In supermarkets and coffee queues, New Zealand’s chins are reappearing. Masks – previously a constant - have become patchy. Once-ubiquitous bottles of hand sanitiser begun to disappear. In some venues, laminated contact-tracing codes are peeling off the walls.
The country, which once embraced snap lockdowns in the face of a single Covid case, has in recent months progressively dropped restrictions and carried on as thousands of people have been infected. Now, looking down the barrel of a rising wave of infections and a growing death toll, New Zealand faces the question of whether it can reclaim its reputation for a world-beating Covid response.
