Today New Zealand entered Covid-19 Alert Level Four, the highest Alert Level for dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic. This means that everyone is to stay at home, apart from those in essential services, initially for a period of four weeks. People are allowed to travel to supermarkets and pharmacies to obtain the necessities of life but are otherwise to remain at home, interacting only with those in the same household. The aim of this unprecedented measure is to break the chain of virus transmission within the community and avoid a catastrophic overwhelming of the health system. As at Wednesday 25 March, New Zealand officially had 205 confirmed cases of people with Covid-19, only six of them requiring hospitalisation but none in Intensive Care. Now is a good time to take extreme measures to minimise the impact of future cases.
To mark the passing days of Alert Level Four, I will choose a polished stone each day. Fortunately I am also able to continue to tumble stones throughout this time of restriction – I have some good stores of stones yet to be tumbled. Each day, I will post photos of a recently polished stone.
Stone One, collected on Gemstone Beach in 2019, is a breccia with small mainly white and light grey fragments in a grey matrix. A breccia is a sedimentary stone made up of randomly oriented angular fragments cemented together in a fine-grained matrix, the fragments not previously eroded by water or wind. Like this stone, it can be similar to a piece of concrete.
Next Post in this Series is Stay-at-Home Day Two.
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