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National | Alert Level 3

Tāmaki Makaurau to move to Alert Level 3 on Tuesday night

Tāmaki Makaurau will move into Alert Level 3, tomorrow night at 11:59pm, with the rest of New Zealand remaining at level 2, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said today.

This ends five weeks of lockdown, the longest lockdown for Auckland to date.

This will last for two weeks and the Cabinet will review the alert level once again on October 4.

Ardern said the Cabinet had accepted advice that level 4 helped contain the outbreak, and level 3 still provided the rules to keep up that containment.

There are changes to level 2, however, with an allowed maximum of 100 people to gather, including at hospitality venues.

Ardern said almost all cases in the past 14 days were known contacts of existing contacts, and they were confident there was no significant undetected transmission.

Level 4 did the job

For the most part there were no widespread issues with workplaces, and most workplaces had strict protocols.

During the address, Ardern revealed that it was now known Delta had been in the community for seven to 10 days before the first case, and that level 4 "was the right move and has worked".

"Level 4 has done the job we needed it to do," Ardern said.

"To everyone, but especially Auckland, thank you for acting quickly and for persevering."

Health director-general Dr Ashley Bloomfield said he was "very confident" there was not a pool of undetected chains of transmissions, and the cases were now geographically confined around the south Auckland areas.

"Elimination is about stamping it out, and that's what level 3 is about. The difference is that this is level 3 with high and increasing rates of vaccination."