New Zealand says it has solved Covid outbreak 'puzzle'

New Zealanders say they are "gutted" by the announcement of the government of a snap lockdown. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern confirmed 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.

New Zealand reported a breakthrough Thursday in tracing the source of a Covid-19 outbreak that plunged the nation into lockdown, with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern saying it should help "stamp out" the virus.

Health officials have been trying to determine how an Auckland man contracted the coronavirus this week, ending a six-month run of no community cases in New Zealand.

She said the traveller had been in quarantine and hospital since touching down, indicating the virus had not been in the community as long as initially feared.

She said finding the outbreak's source also increased the "ability to circle the virus, lock it down and stamp it out".

Ardern ordered a three-day national lockdown -- New Zealand's first in 15 months -- when the first case emerged on Tuesday, with Auckland and nearby Coromandel facing restrictions for a week.

But she said there were grounds for cautious optimism "because we believe it wasn't here for long before it was found".

The person tested positive two days later and was hospitalised a week after that.

A decision is due Friday on whether the three-day lockdown will be extended or end by Saturday.

New Zealand has adopted a policy of eliminating the virus in the community, rather than containing it, which has resulted in only 26 deaths in a population of five million.

Health authorities on Thursday urged mass Covid testing for an entire Outback town in far western New South Wales, where an outbreak that began in Sydney two months ago is spreading.

Early in the pandemic, Wilcannia's roughly 750 residents put up signs on the town's limits asking travellers not to stop -- fearing the virus could obliterate an already vulnerable community, where more than 60 percent identify as Indigenous.

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