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If you were worried about our slow roll out, then Delta arriving here early than expected might be a good thing for us on balance.Ìý

This is exactly what we needed to get vaccination rates up.Ìý

There wasn’t any urgency before.ÌýÌýÌýÌý

Officials could hardly get 12% of invited people to turn up to theÌýManukauÌýmass vaccination event.Ìý

We didn’t have enough older people getting their jabs, that’s part of the reason the government had to open the system up to everyone from September.Ìý

Even Ashley Bloomfield hadn’t yet got his jab despite his age category opening up nearly two weeks ago.Ìý

Many of us were acting like we had all the time in theÌýworld.ÌýÌýÌýÌý

But then Delta arrived.Ìý

And yesterday - first day of the lockdown - we saw a massive surge in jab bookings.Ìý

The Prime Minister said at 1pm it was the busiest day on theÌýbooking'sÌýwebsite yet with a record 195K people signing up.Ìý

That is great result.Ìý

That means that we’ll probably get to a higher vaccination rate, faster than we would haveÌýwithout an outbreak.Ìý

And what that means is thatÌýbecause more of a us will get jabbed faster, we will beÌýableÌýto move on fasterÌýand get onÌýwith the plan to start prising our border open next year.Ìý

The worst thing that could’ve happened to us is that we got to 1ÌýJanuaryÌýnext year hoping to start easing up on the MIQ rules for double-jabbed travellers and then realised our vaccination cover was too low to do that.Ìý

I know a bunch of people will be angry at me for this.Ìý

They’ll misread this as me sayingÌýitsÌýgoodÌýDelta has arrived and wishing death and illness on people.Ìý

ButÌýthe fact isÌýDelta was always goingÌýtoÌýarrive.ÌýIt was an inevitability.Ìý

And it might be the only thing that would’ve got many of us hurrying up and booking that jab.Ìý