Workers and shoppers eat on the steps of Freyberg Place in downtown Auckland, New Zealand, on October 29, 2020, enjoying the freedom of Covid-19 Alert Level 1.
Lynn Grieveson | Writing | Getty Images
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Sunday announced a three-day blockade in the country’s largest city, Auckland, following the emergence of three cases of COVID-19, the first local infections since the end of January.
Level 3 restrictions will require everyone to stay at home, except for essential purchases and jobs, Ardern said, repeating the rigid approach the country took last year to virtually eliminate the pandemic.
“We have already eradicated the virus and will do it again,” Ardern said at a news conference in the capital, Wellington.
New Zealand, which had more than two months without local infections before the January case, is expected to start inoculating its 5 million inhabitants against the new coronavirus on February 20, receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine ahead of schedule.
The restrictions were raised to level 3 until Wednesday, closing public places and banning meetings outside the home, except for weddings and funerals of up to 10 people. Schools will remain open to the children of essential workers, but others have been asked to stay at home.
Sunday’s cases were of a couple and their daughter in Auckland, the first local infections since January 24.
Health officials are trying to find out whether 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 collect more information, conduct tests on a large scale and establish whether there has been broader transmission in the community,” she said. “This is what we believe the cautious approach requires and it is the right thing to do.”
The prime minister said there is no need to stock products, as essential services – including supermarkets, pharmacies and gas stations – will remain open. Even so, long lines formed outside Auckland supermarkets and the photos on social media showed empty shelves.
The airlines were contacted, as the woman in the infected family works for an airline catering company, LSG Sky Chefs, where she mainly works in laundries, officials said.
The COVID-19 alert for the rest of the country was raised to level 2, with all meetings limited to 100 people, including in restaurants and cafes.
Australia reported two new local cases of COVID-19 on Sunday in the country’s second most populous state, Victoria, on the second day of an instant blockade to contain the spread of the highly infectious variant in the UK.
The two cases, including a 3-year-old child, were the first that were not home contacts of a group of infected workers at a quarantine hotel at Melbourne airport, which triggered the five-day blockade, health officials said.
The hotel cluster has already affected 16 people.
New Zealand and Australia closed their international borders and introduced strict rules of social distance at the beginning of the pandemic, drastically reducing the spread of the virus. New Zealand was ranked as the best performing nation in an index of almost 100 countries based on coronavirus containment.