Covid 19 coronavirus: thousands of vehicles turned around at Auckland borders during level 3

Almost 2,000 vehicles were denied entry through police checkpoints in Auckland’s northern and southern limits last week.

Between 6 a.m. M. From Sunday, February 28 and 6 a.m. As of today, police stopped a total of 113,212 vehicles at the 10 border checkpoints in Auckland’s north and south, according to final figures released to the Herald this afternoon.

Of those vehicles, only 1.8 percent rolled over.

Under Auckland’s level 3 restrictions, only essential travel in, out and through the Supercity was allowed. Anyone who did not meet the criteria was rejected.

Of the 1988 vehicles that were rejected, 558 were from the northern checkpoints and 1,430 were from the southern checkpoints.

All checkpoints were removed at 6am this morning when Auckland went to alert level 2 and the rest of the country went to alert level 1.

The police also received a total of 1,158 notifications on their non-emergency 105 hotline about possible violations of alert 3 restrictions in Auckland. Police are redirecting people to their website or the government’s Covid-19 website after their non-emergency 105 phone line was overwhelmed as people sought clarity on Covid rules, or to report possible infractions. Police shared a message on various regional New Zealand Police Facebook pages saying line 105 was experiencing high demand and redirecting people to use online service 105 when possible. The 105 service was flooded early last week as people sought clarity on Covid rules or to report potential violations.

“The police would like to thank all residents for their cooperation and compliance during the Level 3 alert period,” said a police spokesman.

However, not all complied and a police officer was shocked Thursday morning after a disqualified driver sped away from a Covid-19 checkpoint at the intersection of Coal Hill Rd and Mangawhai Rd when the Officer reached out to remove his car keys from the ignition. .

Hassan said at the time that it was a reminder that the residents of Aucklanders had to comply with alert level 3 restrictions and that driver behavior was among a series of incidents in Tāmaki Makaurau over the past few days.

It comes after a rocky start at checkpoints where Auckland residents returning to the city on Sunday faced waits of up to 10 hours to get home.