WELLINGTON – New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Saturday that the country’s largest city, Auckland, would enter a seven-day blockade early in the morning after a new local case of coronavirus originated. unknown.
This comes two weeks after the nearly 2 million people in Auckland were thrown into a three-day rapid blockade, when a family of three was diagnosed with the more transmissible UK variant of the new coronavirus that causes COVID. -19.
Health officials, who could not immediately confirm how the person was infected, said sequencing the genome of the new infection is underway.
The patient developed symptoms on Tuesday and is considered potentially infectious since Sunday, officials said. The person visited several public places during that period.
“Based on this, we are in the unfortunate but necessary position to protect Aucklanders again,” Ardern said, announcing the blockade.
Health authorities have been trying to find out if the new case was linked to the previous February group, now with 12 infections.
The blockade, with level 3 restrictions, will allow people to leave home only for essential shopping and work, Ardern said. Public places will remain closed. Restrictions in the rest of the country will be tightened to level 2 restrictions, including public assembly limits.
New Zealand, one of the most successful developed nations in controlling the spread of the pandemic, has had just over 2,000 cases of coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic.
A Twenty20 cricket match in Auckland, between New Zealand and Australia, scheduled for Friday, will be played in Wellington without crowds, New Zealand Cricket said.
The new restrictions also complicated the America’s Cup Event yacht race scheduled to start on March 6 in the port of Auckland. America’s Cup Event said on Twitter that it works “through implications.”