New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has put the entire nation under strict lockdown after one new case of COVID-19 quickly rose to seven overnight in its largest city of Auckland, the country’s first cases in six months.
All of New Zealand will go into lockdown for three days from Wednesday 18 August, while Auckland and Coromandel, a coastal town in which the infected person had also spent time, will be locked down for seven.
Imposing its toughest level 4 lockdown rules, schools, offices, and all businesses will be shut down, and only essential services will be operational.
“The best thing we can do to get out of this as quickly as we can is to go hard,” Ardern told a news conference.
“We have made the decision on the basis that it is better to start high and go down levels rather than to go low, not contain the virus and see it move quickly,” she said.
Ardern said authorities were assuming the new cases were Delta variant infections, although this has not been confirmed. There may be other cases, she said.
The last reported community case in NZ was in February.
The country has followed a go-hard-and-early strategy that has helped it virtually eliminate COVID-19 domestically, allowing people to live without restrictions although its international borders remain largely closed.
Last month, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern popped the trans-Tasman bubble with Australia for eight weeks until September 18. However, this is now likely to be extended until later this year.
Last week, the New Zealand government signalled that it might block unvaccinated Australians from travelling to Aotearoa under the trans-Tasman bubble when it reopens.
Given ongoing lockdowns and rising case numbers across NSW, VIC and other states along with Kiwi fears around Delta, COVID-19 Minister Chris Hipkins had said a bubble remodelling beckoned.
“It is unlikely that the trans-Tasman safe travel zone will simply reopen in exactly the same form as it was before all of this happened,” he said last week.
“Vaccines by that point will be more widely available on both sides of the Tasman.
“It may be that vaccinations become a prerequisite for non (NZ) citizen travel.”
Mr Hipkins said legal challenges were likely to prevent the no vax, no-fly policy from applying to Kiwis leaving and returning to New Zealand.
With a population of about five million people, New Zealand has recorded 2570 cases and 26 deaths during the pandemic.
