New Zealand’s streak of more than 100 days without a local transmission of the coronavirus is now over.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced Tuesday that authorities have found four confirmed cases in one Auckland household from an unknown source, prompting her to place the country’s largest city under a three-day full lockdown: people will be asked to stay at home, while bars and many other businesses will be closed.
“These three days will give us time to assess the situation, gather information, make sure we have widespread contact tracing so we can find out more about how this case arose and make decisions about how to respond to it once we have further information,” Ardern said at a hastily called news conference late Tuesday.
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New Zealand has recorded its first local tranmissions of the coronavirus in 102 days. (AP)
“I know that this information will be very difficult to receive,” Ardern said. “We had all hoped not to find ourselves in this position again. But we had also prepared for it. And as a team, we have also been here before.”
The new cases are the first local transmissions of the coronavirus in New Zealand in 102 days, according to the Associated Press.
Arden said that as part of the lockdown measures, people will be banned from traveling into Auckland unless they live there.
She said the rest of the country will be raised to Level 2 through Friday, meaning that mass gatherings will be limited to 100 attendees and people would need to socially distance themselves from each other.
Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said the infections were confirmed after a person in their 50s went to their doctor on Monday with symptoms and was swabbed twice, testing positive both times. Six other people in the person's household were then tested, with three more positive results.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has imposed a new lockdown on Auckland. She is shown here during a press conference in December 2019. (AP)
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“Importantly, the person has no history of overseas travel,” Bloomfield said, adding that the source of the infections remains unknown.
Until Tuesday, the only known cases of the virus in New Zealand were 22 travelers who had recently returned from abroad and were being held in quarantine at the border.
The country has been praised globally for its virus response.
New Zealand initially got rid of the virus by imposing a strict lockdown in late March, when only about 100 people had tested positive for the disease. That stopped its spread.
Life then returned to normal for many people in the South Pacific nation of 5 million, as they attended rugby games at packed stadiums and sat down in bars and restaurants without fear of getting infected. But some had warned that the country had become complacent.
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New Zealanders have not been wearing masks routinely, but authorities have been urging people to buy them just in case.
The outbreak comes less than six weeks before New Zealanders are due to go to the polls in a general election.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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August 11, 2020 at 05:00PM
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