'A beautiful day': New Zealand handshakes and hugs its way back to pre-Covid-19 life

 “Ijust had a meeting with someone and I thought, ‘Do I shake your hand?’” says Casey Allum, who was among those flocking to eat lunch at Wellington’s sunny, sparkling waterfront on Tuesday. Handshakes had been verboten until midnight on Monday, as people were required to stay a metre apart from colleagues, or two metres from strangers.

“Then he came in with the handshake,” Allum says. “And I thought, ‘Oh sweet, that’s easy’.”

New Zealanders woke on Tuesday to no restrictions on their daily lives for the first time since 21 March, with all remaining rules lifted after the country’s last known case of Covid-19 recovered from the virus. People in a nation that appears to have vanquished the coronavirus – for the time being – were permitted to hug and kiss strangers, to stand shoulder to shoulder at rock concerts, pray in large groups at mosques and churches, attend rugby games and throw large wedding parties or funerals.

Strict border controls remain, with New Zealanders and their families the only people permitted to enter the country. They must remain in government-run quarantine for 14 days.

The announcement by prime minister Jacinda Ardern that all other rules would be lifted at midnight – earlier than expected – sparked joy for many. Juliet Gerrad, the prime minister’s chief science advisor said she was enjoying “a cheeky midnight single malt” at the time the restrictions were officially removed. Others posted images of fireworks and wished each other a “happy new year.”

While no one was openly hugging in the streets on Tuesday, those walking outdoors were giddy with pleasure at the new status. The daring even pushed pedestrian crosswalk buttons with their hands, rather than the crouched elbow-jab New Zealanders have resorted to during the pandemic.

 “A little cheer” went up in Scott Harris’ office, where he and his central Wellington colleagues had held a “watching party” for Ardern’s news conference. He was most excited about returning to his favourite game.

“Me and my mates run a lacrosse club,” he says, adding that it was “quite hard to run a contact sport with one-metre distancing.”

Bars and nightclubs are also readying themselves for perhaps the most raucous Tuesday night they might ever have, as rules requiring patrons to remain seated and physically distanced, receiving only table service, were jettisoned.

Kieran O’Malley’s staff at the Fork & Brewer pub had spent the morning dragging furniture from storage ready to boost their capacity to its pre-pandemic 250 people, instead of the 100 the bar was permitted to accommodate during the later stages of Covid-19 restrictions.

“It’s a godsend,” he says, adding that turnover had been “down by half” under the physical distancing rules. The government had made the right decision in shutting the country down, O’Malley says, but it had been tough and his business had needed more support.

 “Now we’re back to normal,” he says. “But it’s going to be a while before we build confidence back again.”

In the window of one central Wellington gift shop on Tuesday, a quirky shrine to “Saint Ashley” has been erected; Ashley Bloomfield, the even-mannered, often cautious health official has become a household name during the crisis, with his face printed on tea towels and turned into heroic memes online.

Bloomfield, after reporting that 1,053 Covid-19 tests processed the day before had uncovered no new cases, says with a rare smile that it was “a beautiful day in Wellington”.

But he warns that New Zealand has not seen the last of the pandemic.

“We know this will happen,” he says, referring to the prospect of fresh diagnoses. “It may be that we detect a case at the border … we may even find cases still here on our community onshore.”

Ardern and her government also face the prospect of rebuilding a nation with an economy that faces a steep recession, an unemployment rate upwards of 8.5%, according to the Treasury, and a critical industry, tourism, that lies in tatters.

Ardern has voiced her anger at learning The Warehouse, a locally owned big box retail chain, was considering more than 1,000 job cuts which the company said had been accelerated by the pandemic. “I do think they are a company that has promoted themselves as being in the community and for the community,” Ardern said, adding that many smaller businesses had resisted job losses.

Knowing that victory might only be temporary did not take the gloss off for New Zealanders: both the capital’s and Christchurch’s daily newspapers feature a full-page cartoon on their covers, with a kiwi – the flightless bird – standing atop a number one, delineating New Zealand’s lowest alert level number, as spectators look on in awe.

The weather report reads: “A fine, still day to welcome in level 1 and all the freedoms we used to take for granted.”

‘Now everyone can relax’

Betrothed couples turned their attention again to their weddings, with restrictions limiting gatherings to 100 people lifted.

“I’ve already had two of the brides who were thinking about it come to me and say, ‘We can set a date and get on with it,’” says Julie Lassen, a Christchurch-based celebrant, adding that even though couples could not invite overseas guests, some had decided to proceed anyway. “It’s made a huge difference because now everyone can relax and hug each other.”

The lifting of rules was good news, too, for fans of New Zealand’s most beloved sport, rugby. The domestic competition will be the first professional rugby competition in the world to welcome fans en masse to sports grounds in the Covid-19 era when games kick off in Auckland and Dunedin this weekend. Stadiums are permitted to be filled to capacity.

But public health experts still worry about the state of the country’s contact tracing.

“The difficulty is that really the current app seems like very much a temporary filler until something better comes along,” says Michael Baker, an epidemiologist at the University of Otago, referring to the government’s contact tracing app, which just over 10% of New Zealanders have registered to use.

The country has seen fewer than 1,500 confirmed cases and 22 deaths after Ardern locked down New Zealand at the 200-case mark. Most say that despite the country’s seeming lucky escape from Covid-19, they would return to normal life with slightly cleaner hands than before.

“We’re spraying and sanitising lots. It’s great to see every guy in the toilets washing their hands,” says bar manager O’Malley. “People sanitising their hands is great. Why not keep doing it?”