The Act Party has accused the Prime Minister keeping Auckland in Alert Level Four for no good reason.

Auckland will move to level 3 at 11.59pm on Tuesday, ending its five-week spell with heavy restrictions under level 4.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield told morning radio “we’re five weeks on to the lockdown and we’ve achieved what we set out to achieve.”

“There’s no doubt with delta we would be in the thousands now if we hadn’t gone to that level for. Elimination is about zero tolerance to the virus in the community.”

ACT Leader David Seymour said “everything Jacinda Ardern based yesterday’s decision on was true two weeks ago, the only thing that’s changed is politics.”

“Two weeks ago, there were about 20 cases each day, most new cases were within households, but a few new cases popped up to keep the outbreak burbling along.”

He said “very little new transmission was through the workplace and a lot more business could have been done than was allowed under Alert Level 4.”

“As ACT said last Monday, Alert Level 4 was not working to contain Delta but destroying business made it the worst of all worlds.”

“The Government is now accepting what ACT has been saying all along, it needs to balance COVID with all aspects of New Zealanders wellbeing. COVID is very important but it is not the only challenge to New Zealanders wellbeing and for more and more people it’s not the most urgent either.”

“We just spent an extra week at Level 4 for no reason at all by the Government’s own admission.”

“Now, it’s totally unclear what the future holds because the next decision will be as logical as the last.”

“The only new thing today was Jacinda Ardern’s new triumph of spin terminology “transmission to secondary households”… also known as community transmission.”