New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern put the nation under strict lockdown on Tuesday after one new case of the coronavirus was reported in its largest city of Auckland, the country’s first in six months. All of New Zealand will be in lockdown for three days from Wednesday while Auckland and Coromandel, a coastal town that the infected person had also spent time in, will be in lockdown for seven days.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern invoked some of the stirring rhetoric she used early in the pandemic by urging the “team of 5 million” — New Zealand’s population — to go hard and early in trying to eliminate the latest outbreak. Imposing its toughest level 4 lockdown rules, schools, offices and all businesses will be shut down and only essential services will be operational. “The best thing we can do to get out of this as quickly as we can is to go hard,” Ardern told a news conference. “We have made the decision on the basis that it is better to start high and go down levels rather than to go low, not contain the virus and see it move quickly,” she said. New Zealand had managed to stamp out the virus, and the last outbreak was almost six months ago, with the last community transmission reported on February 28. But the PM had been warning that the contagiousness of the delta variant would likely require more drastic action than previous outbreaks. There may be other cases, she said.
The last reported community case of COVID-19 in New Zealand was in February. New Zealand has followed a go-hard-and-early strategy that has helped it virtually eliminate COVID-19 domestically, allowing people to live without restrictions although its international borders remain largely closed. The country has reported about 2,500 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 26 related deaths. Meanwhile, New Zealand has also been slower than other developed nations to inoculate its population, leaving it vulnerable to outbreaks. Only 32% of people have had at least one shot and 18% are fully vaccinated.
