WELLINGTON – A coronavirus case that plunged New Zealand into a snap national lockdown was confirmed as the Delta variant today, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said, as six more cases emerged.
She said that one of the new cases is a nurse at Auckland Hospital, who had been placed on “internal lockdown” while another is a teacher at a high school, both representing high-risk environments for rapidly spreading the virus.
The prime minister said the spread of the virus justifies her decision to issue nationwide stay-at-home orders yesterday after the initial case was identified.
“It demonstrates, at this stage, Level 4 (hard lockdown) is the right place to be,” Ardern told TVNZ.
The first case, a 58-year-old Auckland man, ended a six-month run without community transmission in New Zealand, which has recorded only 26 Covid-19 deaths in a population of five million since the start of the global pandemic.
The national lockdown – New Zealand’s first in 15 months – is scheduled to last three days, with Auckland and the nearby Coromandel area facing restrictions for a week.
Ardern said the country’s strategy of eliminating the virus, rather than just containing it, has worked throughout the crisis and she is confident it will succeed against the highly transmissible Delta strain.
“Yes, Delta poses a greater threat, but the same tools that have worked before will do so again if we follow the rules,” she said.
She said wastewater testing in Auckland has detected no sign of the virus, giving cause for optimism.
“That tells us that if we have something, it doesn’t appear to be a long-standing outbreak because we haven’t had anything in our wastewater testing,” she said.
Officials have said the latest outbreak has connections to the border, and investigations to determine its origin are ongoing.
However, New Zealanders must brace for additional Covid-19 cases from an outbreak that has plunged the previously virus-free country into a snap lockdown, Ardern warned today after six more positive cases are detected.
Ardern confirms that New Zealand is dealing with the highly transmissible Delta variant linked to the outbreak in Australia that authorities have so far been unable to contain.
She also said that the rapid rise to a total of seven cases justifies her decision to issue nationwide stay-at-home orders yesterday after the first case was identified.
“We’re expecting more,” she said as the cluster grows to 120 cases, even with stringent restrictions in place.
Ardern said investigators are trying to work out how the man caught the strain that is linked to Australia.
“Our case has originated in Australia, and now we have to work through how and when it got here,” she said.
“The natural place to start is to look at our managed isolation (border) facilities.”
Unpredictable and disruptive
Ardern said there are three positive border cases this month from Sydney, where an outbreak continues to rage even though stay-at-home orders have been in place since late June.
Health Director-General Ashley Bloomfield said there are no obvious links between the border cases from New South Wales, of which Sydney is the capital, and the seven-strong cluster in Auckland, four of whom were flatmates in their 20s.
“They’ve been out and about a lot and I’m flagging that there will be large numbers of places of interest,” Bloomfield added, saying some of the flatmates have visited a church and Auckland’s Sky City casino.
Police confirm that four people have been arrested at a small anti-lockdown protest in Auckland, with supporters of high-profile conspiracy theorists, Billy Te Kahika, saying on his social media platforms that he is among those detained.
“It is disappointing that some choose to put others at risk,” Ardern told reporters, saying most people are following the rules.
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand cited the latest lockdown as a reason for keeping its base interest rate at a record low of 0.25%.
Analysts have predicted before the outbreak that the central bank would lift rates amid improving economic signs.
“Today’s re-introduction of Level 4 restrictions to activity across New Zealand is a stark example of how unpredictable and disruptive the virus is proving to be,” it said. – AFP, August 18, 2021
