New Zealand Covid outbreak: Queenstown could be ‘closed by Friday’, says official

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New Zealand’s adventure capital, Queenstown, could shut down after the first major outbreak of Covid-19 spread across the wider state.

The state of Otago had recorded 51 positive cases as of yesterday, with all but 10 spread across Queenstown and Wanaka.

Talking about the need for close contacts of positive cases to isolate, and the number of venues where positive-testing locals had been, Queenstown Chamber of Commerce chief executive Ruth Stokes made the prediction that,“everywhere will be closed by Friday”.

“If you are isolating for seven days or isolating for 10 days, if you‘re closed you’re closed, and these are businesses on the brink,” Stokes told Radio New Zealand.

“These businesses going to the wall aren‘t just fly-by-night businesses. These are established firms that have been around for years, contributed millions of dollars to the local economy, and employ a lot of people,” Ms Stokes added.

Cases in the city had been kept at zero through much of the pandemic until August 2021, when the trickle of imported cases spread into the community.

New Zealand is currently seeing a record 981 cases of Covid nationwide, a figure that prompted government to move to phase two of its “red light setting” last night.

Queenstown is known as the adventure capital of New Zealand, with over a million international tourists stopping by the city each year in pre-pandemic times.

The city used to employ some 17,000 people in tourism, a figure which dropped to nearly 9,000 in 2021.

Several tourism industry figures have criticised New Zealand’s strict isolation rules as businesses attempt to bounce back from a two-year tourism shutdown.

“They need to look at the fact that this does not work, it‘s going to shut down the entire economy and people are going to lose jobs,” said Blair Impey, CEO of Republic Hospitality Group.

According to Mr Impey, nine of the group’s 11 venues are closed with many staff in isolation.

“They need to move straight to RATs [Rapid Antigen Tests] - if you test positive than stay at home, if you test negative then crack on and get back to work.”

“My understanding is that there is not going to be any wage subsidy or resurgence support so if that‘s the case, hurry up and get these RAT and we’ll crack on. Otherwise, if you want us to pay for it surely there is going to be some Government support,” he said.

“So many businesses are going to fall over because of this.”