And true to their word - in combination with months-honed contact tracing and genome-sequencing, our little UK variant outbreak is contained and we can move back to Alert Level 2 (and to Level 1 come Monday if all goes to plan).

I read an interesting article about the UK variant on Stuff the other day - if you can get past the long advert on the video, it’s well worth a watch as the difference in spread in NZ of UK Covid with the risk mitigation’s in place (alert level protocols) compared to not having them is quite interesting. While the genome sequencing lets us know it’s the same variant, I guess our “habits” of bubbles, social distancing, masks and washing our hands have something to do with the spread being slower or smaller which buys a bit more time.

In theory, locking down should get easier each time, but for some reason, it doesn’t. I thought it might just be me: our comms at work goes UP as the levels do, so I feel constantly on a tenter hook waiting for the next bunch of copy for an email/web blast to come through. But after talking to others, they felt this week was a bit of a slog too.

Don’t get any of us wrong - we are flipping lucky population to be where we are, how we are, and who we trust to lead us - we have a LOT of things going our way at the moment. But hard is hard, OK? And I’m thankful it’s a) the weekend and b) we’re in Level 2 with Level 1 clearly in sight.