Workers and shoppers eat at the Freyberg site stairs in central Auckland, New Zealand, on October 29, 2020, enjoying the freedom of the Covid-19 level 1 alert.
Lynn Grieveson | Writing Getty Images
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Sunday announced a three-day closure in the country’s largest city, Auckland, after three COVID-19 cases appeared, the first local infections since late January.
Level 3 restrictions will require everyone to stay home except essential shopping and essential work, Ardern said, repeating the strict approach the country has taken over the past year in virtually eliminating the pandemic.
“We have already wiped out the virus and we will do it again,” Ardern said at a news conference in the capital, Wellington.
New Zealand, which had spent more than two months without local infections before the January case, will begin inoculating its 5 million people against the new coronavirus on February 20, receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine earlier than expected.
Restrictions were raised to level 3 until Wednesday, closing public places and banning meetings away from home, except for weddings and funerals of up to ten people. Schools will remain open to children of essential workers, but others were asked to stay home.
Sunday’s cases were a couple and their daughter in Auckland, the first local infections since Jan. 24.
Health authorities are trying to find out if these cases involve any of the new highly infectious variants and how the family contracted the virus, Ardern said.
“Three days should give us enough time to gather more information, do large-scale testing and determine if there has been a wider community transmission,” he said. “That’s what we believe requires a prudent approach and that’s the right thing to do.”
The prime minister said there was no need to stock up on goods, as essential services (including supermarkets, pharmacies and petrol stations) would remain open. Still, long queues formed outside Auckland supermarkets and images on social media showed empty grocery shelves.
Airlines have been contacted as the woman from the infected family works for an airline catering company, LSG Sky Chefs, where she works mainly in laundries, officials said.
The COVID-19 alert for the rest of the country was raised to level 2, with all concentrations limited to 100 people, including restaurants and cafes.
Australia on Sunday reported two new local cases of COVID-19 in the country’s second most populous state, Victoria, on the second day of an instant closure to contain the spread of the highly infectious variant of the UK.
The two cases, including a 3-year-old boy, were the first to be non-domestic contacts of a group of infected workers at a Melbourne Airport quarantine hotel that led to the five-day closure, according to van inform health authorities.
The hotel cluster has already affected 16 people.
New Zealand and Australia closed their international borders and introduced strict rules of social distancing at the onset of the pandemic, drastically reducing the spread of the virus. New Zealand was ranked as the best performing country in an index of almost 100 countries based on coronavirus containment.