New Zealand’s government on Monday announced a vaccine mandate under which teachers and healthcare workers in the country will be legally required to get inoculated against Covid-19, a move that comes as New Zealand continues to battle a small but unrelenting local outbreak fueled by the highly infectious delta variant. New Zealand’s vaccine mandate comes just a week after it acknowledged that it can no longer continue with its ‘zero Covid’ strategy which relies on completely eliminating the local spread of the virus. Before the current outbreak, New Zealand’s strict border restrictions, quarantine measures, and strong contact tracing efforts had allowed it to effectively stomp out the local spread of Covid-19 without resorting to protracted lockdowns. The county’s approach to the pandemic was hailed as a model for the rest of the world and before the first delta case was detected in August, New Zealand had enjoyed a six-month streak of zero local Covid-19 cases. The current delta variant outbreak has forced New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland, to remain under lockdown for nearly two months and the stringent outbreak has done very little to quell the spread of the highly infectious delta variant. In the U.S. vaccine mandates have been shown to be very effective in driving up vaccination rates.
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New Zealand Mandates Covid Vaccines For Health Workers, Teachers | Forbes