New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Saturday that the country’s largest city, Auckland, will be put under a seven-day lockdown starting Sunday after a community case of coronavirus of unknown origin was recorded.
The rest of New Zealand will be put into Level 2 restrictions limiting public gatherings, among others, he told a news conference.
In mid-February, Auckland’s nearly 2 million residents were plunged into a sudden three-day lockdown after a family of three were diagnosed with the most communicable variant of COVID-19 in the UK.
The infected person went to the gym and other crowded places after taking a test on Friday afternoon.
The confinement was decreed after confirming this Saturday a new local contagion of a person who went yesterday afternoon to take a test to detect the virus; and that later he went to the gym and other public places with great influx.
The health authorities of the oceanic country have not been able to specify where this person could be infected, who began to show symptoms of the disease on Tuesday.
The management of the pandemic in New Zealand has been considered the best in the world
Ardern indicated that it is a “cause for concern” that the patient carried the virus for a week and was not placed in voluntary isolation.
The general director of Health, Ashley Bloomfield, indicated that they have proceeded to do tests on the closest relatives.
New Zealand, whose management of the pandemic has been considered the best in the world, has accumulated a total of 2,372 covid-19 infections since the pandemic began, including 356 cases classified as probable, and 26 deaths.
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