WELLINGTON, New Zealand – Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, will go into a three-day lockdown just before midnight Sunday after the discovery of three unexplained cases of coronavirus in the community.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the move after an urgent meeting with other top lawmakers in the cabinet. She said they have decided to proceed with caution until they find out more about the outbreak, including whether the infections are of the more contagious variants.
The lockdown is the first in New Zealand in six months and represents a significant setback in the country’s largely successful efforts to contain the virus. It will also force a delay in the America’s Cup sailing regatta.
New Zealand had successfully wiped out the spread of the community, and many people elsewhere in the world watched with envy as New Zealanders returned to work and began attending concerts and sporting events without having to wear masks or other precautions had to take.
Ardern had indeed planned to attend the Big Gay Out on Sunday, a festival in Auckland that celebrates the rainbow community and attracts tens of thousands of people. She canceled those plans and returned to Wellington to contain the outbreak.
“I ask the New Zealanders to stay strong and friendly,” Ardern said at a hastily organized Sunday evening press conference. ‘I know we all feel the same way when this happens. We all get the feeling of ‘not again’. But remember, we’ve been here before and that means we know how to get out of here, and that’s together. “
New Zealand’s greatest vulnerability lay at its border.
New cases are regularly discovered among returning travelers, all of whom have to spend two weeks in quarantine. Despite precautions, there have been several times the virus leaked from the border before rechecking, and officials are trying to determine if that happened again.
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In the latter case, a mother, father and daughter from Auckland developed the disease. Officials said the mother works at a catering company that does laundry for airlines, and officials are investigating if there is a link with contaminated passengers. Officials said the woman did not board the planes herself.
Officials said the rest of New Zealand outside Auckland will also come under increased restrictions, although it will not be shut down.
“We’re collecting all the facts as soon as we can, and the system that has served us so well in the past is really getting ready to do that again,” said Chris Hipkins, Covid-19’s secretary of response.
He described the cases as new and active. He said scientists are performing genome sequencing to see if they are variants, as well as to see if they match infected passengers.
“New Zealand has kept Covid-19 under better control than almost any other country,” said Hipkins. “But as we’ve been saying, there is no such thing as no risk.”
New Zealand, with a population of 5 million, has reported a total of just over 2,300 cases and 25 deaths since the start of the pandemic.