WELLINGTON, New Zealand – New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland, will start in a three – day exclusion just before midnight on Sunday after three unexplained cases of coronavirus were discovered in the community.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the move after an urgent meeting with other top lawmakers in the Cabinet. She said they decided to proceed cautiously until they found out more about the outbreak, including whether the infections were of the more contagious variants.
The shutdown is the first in New Zealand in six months and is a major setback in the country’s largely successful efforts to control the virus. It will also force a delay in the America’s Cup sailing regatta.
New Zealand successfully eliminated the spread of the community, and many people around the world looked envious when New Zealanders returned to work and began attending concerts and sporting events without wearing masks or taking other precautions. .
Indeed, Ardern planned Sunday to attend the Big Gay Out, an Auckland festival that celebrates the rainbow community and attracts tens of thousands of people. Eventually she canceled the plans and returned to Wellington to manage the outbreak.
“I urge New Zealanders to stay strong and friendly,” Ardern told a news conference on Sunday evening. “I know we all feel the same way when it happens. We all have the feeling of ‘Not again’. But remember, we’ve been here before and that means we know how to get out of here again, and it’s together. ‘
New Zealand’s biggest vulnerability was on the border.
New cases are regularly caught among returning travelers, who all have to spend two weeks in quarantine. Despite precautions, there have been several times that the virus has leaked from the border before it was re-controlled, and officials are trying to determine if it happened again.
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In the latest case, a mother, father and daughter from Auckland contracted the disease. Officials said the mother works at a catering business that was laundry for airlines, and officials are investigating whether there is a connection with infected passengers. Officials said the woman did not board the planes herself.
Officials said the rest of New Zealand outside Auckland would also be placed under increased restrictions, although it would not be locked up.
“We are gathering all the facts as fast as we can, and the system that has served us so well in the past is really ready to do it again,” said Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins.
He described the cases as new and active. He said scientists are performing genome sequencing to see if it is variant, and also to see if it matches any infected passengers.
“New Zealand has found that Covid-19 contains better than almost any other country,” Hipkins said. “But as we have repeatedly said, there is no risk.”
New Zealand, with a population of 5 million, has reported just over 2,300 cases and 25 deaths in total since the start of the pandemic.