New Zealand will abandon its long-touted effort to eliminate cases of COVID-19 across the nation amid an ongoing outbreak of the highly transmissible delta variant of the virus.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Monday that Auckland would end its more than three-month lockdown in early December and the country would institute a three-tier traffic light system that will give broader freedoms to fully vaccinated people.

The traffic light system will begin on Dec. 2 and be based on the use of vaccine passports. An area in a green designation will have limited restrictions, with schools, retail outlets and hospitality venues open with no limits. An orange designation will be close to normal life with some mask requirements and business restrictions. The red designation will encourage working from home but allow retail and public gatherings for the vaccinated with some size limits.

Vaccine certificates will be key in many places, allowing cafes, churches, hair salons and other venues to operate close to normal if they opt to use them.

The move is a dramatic shift for New Zealand , which had for much of the pandemic been a beacon of the COVID elimination method, squashing outbreaks with swift, sweeping lockdowns. That changed with the delta variant, which first began to spread in August among the population of 5 million. Arderns government has also faced increasing protests amid the restrictions and calls from opposition lawmakers to end the lockdown system.