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It is said to have been the biggest open-air concert since the beginning of the corona pandemic: As part of their tour of New Zealand, the fusion rock band Six60 performed at the sold out Sky Stadium in Wellington on Saturday evening.

The guests did not have to wear masks or keep their distances, 32,000 people came to the show.

A house number even in times before the pandemic.

In times of a pandemic, however, such a concert is unimaginable in large parts of the world.

While many in Germany are longingly waiting for concerts that had to be postponed in 2020 to be rescheduled, in Wellington thousands crowd in front of the stage.

Front singer Matiu Walters greeted his audience with the words: "Welcome to the greatest show on earth!" The guests then chanted a refrain from the band: "This is forever!"

In the run-up to the show, singer Walters said in an interview with the news platform Three's Newshub that he empathizes with people overseas.

He himself remembered being locked in lockdown wondering if it would ever end.

The fact that his band is able to give concerts again must be understood as a ray of hope.

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On their tour, the band played four concerts of a similar size.

In total, Six60 played in front of over 100,000 fans in the past few weeks, and another concert will follow, as the New Zealand news portal Scoop reports.

Before the tour, the band gave hygiene tips: If fans felt sick, they should stay at home, wash their hands regularly and switch on the Bluetooth function for the corona tracking app.

Auckland went into lockdown for two days

The island state has long since returned to a largely normal state of affairs, and the wearing of masks and other precautionary measures has been dispensed with.

The New Zealanders owe their regained freedom to extremely strict measures and precise contact tracing.

With this strategy, the country with its five million inhabitants has so far got through the crisis lightly.

With fewer than 2,000 infections and 25 deaths linked to a corona infection, the country is considered a prime example of fighting the pandemic.

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On Sunday, one day after the concert, New Zealand reported new infections for the first time since January 24th.

A couple and their daughter are affected; they live in Auckland, the largest city in the country.

All three contracted the virus variant first found in the UK, which is spreading faster than others.

Presumably the mother got infected while working for a catering company that does laundry services for airlines, it said.

The government under Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern immediately imposed a three-day lockdown in the metropolis, the first in the country for six months.

People are only allowed for exceptions such as shopping and commuting from home.

The authorities had ramped up the test capacities in Auckland.

15,000 tests were carried out on Monday alone.

So far, however, no further infections have been reported.

The government has also tightened some regulations in the rest of the country.

For example, the size of gatherings was limited to 100 people.