New Zealand will enter a nationwide lockdown on Tuesday (August 17), after its largest city of Auckland detected the country’s first locally transmitted Covid-19 case in six months, announced prime minister Jacinda Ardern.
All of New Zealand will be under the strictest level lockdown for three days from 11.59 Tuesday; while Auckland and Coromandel, a coastal town that the infected person had also spent time in, will be in lockdown for seven days.
Under level four lockdown, schools, offices and businesses will be closed, with only essential services such as supermarkets and pharmacies allowed to operate.
Ardern told a press conference Tuesday authorities were assuming the new case involving an unvaccinated 58-year-old man was a Delta variant, although this has not been confirmed.
“We are one of the last countries in the world to have the Delta variant in our community,” Ardern said. “We’re in the position to learn from experience overseas, and what actions work, and what actions don’t work.”
“Delta has been called a gamechanger – and it is. It means we need to again go hard and early to stop the spread. We have seen what can happen elsewhere if we fail to get on top of it. We only get one chance.”
New Zealand has won widespread praise for its Covid-19 response, recording just 2,500 cases and 26 deaths in a population of five million. But the country has been slow to vaccinate, with only less than 20 per cent of the population fully inoculated.
New Zealand will enter a nationwide lockdown on Tuesday (August 17), after its largest city of Auckland detected the country’s first locally transmitted Covid-19 case in six months, announced prime minister Jacinda Ardern.
All of New Zealand will be under the strictest level lockdown for three days from 11.59 Tuesday; while Auckland and Coromandel, a coastal town that the infected person had also spent time in, will be in lockdown for seven days.
Under level four lockdown, schools, offices and businesses will be closed, with only essential services such as supermarkets and pharmacies allowed to operate.
Ardern told a press conference Tuesday authorities were assuming the new case involving an unvaccinated 58-year-old man was a Delta variant, although this has not been confirmed.
“We are one of the last countries in the world to have the Delta variant in our community,” Ardern said. “We’re in the position to learn from experience overseas, and what actions work, and what actions don’t work.”
“Delta has been called a gamechanger – and it is. It means we need to again go hard and early to stop the spread. We have seen what can happen elsewhere if we fail to get on top of it. We only get one chance.”
New Zealand has won widespread praise for its Covid-19 response, recording just 2,500 cases and 26 deaths in a population of five million. But the country has been slow to vaccinate, with only less than 20 per cent of the population fully inoculated.