Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s Cabinet meets later today to decide the fate of Auckland’s alert level

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s cabinet is once again poised to make the decision whether Auckland is ready to lower alert levels and join the rest of the country at Level 1.

The ministers will meet this afternoon to make the call and Ardern will announce the decision tomorrow at noon.

But Auckland locals have reason to be optimistic, if Ardern’s comments last Friday are anything to follow.

“The cabinet will review this decision [alert level] at the end of next week (tomorrow) with a view to bringing Auckland to level 1 at the start of the weekend, if we are in a position to do so.

Since he made those comments, there have been no community cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand.

This has been good news for Chief Health Officer Dr. Ashley Bloomfield.

As has been the case in all other cabinet meetings where changing alert levels was on the agenda, Bloomfield will provide ministers with his recommendation.

He has been shy about telling the media what that recommendation will be, saying this is between him and the Cabinet until the decision is made.

But there are a number of factors that would certainly give you optimism that Auckland is ready to enter alert level 1.

The main one is the fact that there has not been a single case from the Covid community since February 28.

That is the same day that Ardern announced that Auckland would enter Alert Level 3 for one week.

The person who tested positive that day was an MIT student who went to the gym after his test. They had also been in the community when they should have been isolated at home.

Here’s what Ardern was concerned about: A major factor behind the new lockdown was the fact that a contagious person had been in the community.

“There were a lot of exposure events that posed a significant risk of spread,” Ardern said last Friday.

Because of this, there was a test bombardment in Auckland.

In the week the city was at level 3, a “significant proportion” of the roughly 50,000 Covid-19 tests conducted were conducted in Auckland.

Anyone with symptoms was asked to take a test, but health officials focused significantly on Hunter’s Plaza gymnasium and MIT, places where the community’s latest case hung out.

Despite hundreds of contacts and close contacts, they were tested and told to isolate not a single new community case was detected.

There was a slight problem last week: a border-related case in which a crew member was likely exposed to the virus overseas and tested positive as part of routine tests.

But that was not treated as a community case and they were quickly quarantined.

Bloomfield even went so far as to track down people who were lingering when it came to getting tested and force them to do so.

Announcing that Auckland would return to level 2 last Friday, Ardern said the lack of community cases was one of the main reasons for lowering alert levels.

Another factor that ministers will be watching closely is the level of evidence in Auckland.

Lots of tests mean that there is less chance that Covid-19 will go undetected in the community.

And over the past week, there has been a lot of testing.

More than 8,600 tests were conducted on Tuesday, 3,500 on Monday, 4,000 on Sunday, and 6,700 on Saturday.