WELLINGTON – New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Saturday said Auckland, the country’s largest city, will go into a seven-day lockdown on Sunday morning after a new local case of coronovirus of unknown origin is revealed.
It appears two weeks after Auckland’s nearly 2 million residents were caught in a three-day lockdown when a family of three were discovered to have more convertible UK variants of the new coronovirus that cause COVID-19.
Health officials, who could not immediately confirm how the person was infected, said genome sequencing of the new infection was underway.
Officials said the patient developed symptoms on Tuesday and is believed to be potentially contagious since Sunday. The person has visited many public places during that period.
“Based on this, we are again in an unfortunate but necessary position to save Aucklanders,” Ardern said, announcing the lockdown.
Health officials were trying to find out if the new case was related to the earlier February cluster, which is now on 12 infections.
The lockdown with Level 3 restrictions will only allow people to leave the house for necessary shopping and necessary work, Ardern said. Public places will remain closed. Restrictions in the rest of the country will be tightened to level 2 restrictions, including limitations on public ceremonies.
New Zealand, one of the most successful developed nations to control the spread of the pandemic, has seen more than 2,000 cases of coronovirus since the onset of the pandemic.
The New Zealand cricket team said that the Twenty20 cricket match between New Zealand and Australia in Auckland on Friday would be played in Wellington without any crowd.
The new restrictions also complicated the America’s Cup event ferry race, which began on 6 March in the port of Auckland. The America’s Cup event said on Twitter that it was working “through implication”.
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