Coronavirus NZ: Auckland extends lockdown as NZ cases spiral to 30
Auckland’s stage three lockdown will be extended for 12 days, after New Zealand’s fresh virus outbreak ballooned to 30 cases.
Auckland’s stage three lockdown will be extended for 12 days, after New Zealand’s fresh coronavirus outbreak ballooned to 30 cases.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said 53 hours after revealing the initial four cases, another 29 infections had already been linked to the Auckland family, with another case suspected.
However, Ms Ardern said the original source of the virus continued to remain a mystery, after genomic testing failed to link the outbreak to either border control or controlled quarantine. She said the earliest case could be linked back to a worker in the Americold factory, whose symptoms began on July 31.
“The sequence of the virus from the current outbreak is not the same as the sequences from community cases in our first original outbreak in New Zealand. This suggests this is not a case of the virus beings ornament or of a burning ember in our community,” Ms Ardern told a press conference this afternoon
“It appears to be new to New Zealand. In terms of wider surveillance, since I made the announcement to move alert levels on Tuesday, we have tested more people than in any other time we have had COVID in New Zealand.”
Ms Ardern said stage three restrictions in Auckland, and stage two restrictions across the rest of the country, would remain in place for 12 days until 11:59pm on Wednesday 26 August – fourteen days after the initial case was discovered.
Ardern to announce lockdown decision
The new cluster of coronavirus cases that sent New Zealand’s largest city into lockdown has spread out of Auckland, with two cases confirmed 200km south.
NZ recorded 12 new cases on Friday – a higher number than NSW’s latest tally of nine – with one probable case.
All but one of the new cases were linked to the original cluster, with Friday’s new cases taking the country’s total active cases to 48, with 30 now linked to the cluster first revealed on Tuesday. A case in Auckland is still under investigation.
The rise increases the possibility of the lockdown of Auckland, which was due to be ended at midnight local time on Friday (10pm AEST), being extended at least until next week. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will announce the decision on lockdown at 5.30om local time (3.30pm AEST) on Friday afternoon.
Two new cases in Tokoroa, in south Waikato over 200km from Auckland, are related to a family member of the original South Auckland cluster who visited the town while infectious, but before showing any symptoms.
Announcing the new numbers, New Zealand Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said the Tokoroa cases were “clearly linked” to the Auckland cluster but he would not disclose whether he would therefore advise on an extension of lockdown.
As testing stations were set up in Tokoroa, Dr Bloomfield said he was pleased most of the cases could be traced back to the original family, with no other community transmission.
“I think we’re getting an increasingly good picture ... and the picture we’re getting is a very good one,” he said.
However he still could not confirm the source of the new cluster – thought to be a cold storage centre in south Auckland.
“It is still a piece of the puzzle we’re looking to fill,” he said.
NZ braces for longer lockdown
After 102 days without community transmission made New Zealand a poster child for COVID-19 management, the Prime Minister’s elimination strategy is under pressure as it confronts an infection rate that exceeds Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia. In an escalating cluster in the nation’s biggest city, 13 new cases of community transmission were detected on Thursday in addition to four on Tuesday.
The 17 cases brings to 36 the number of active cases in New Zealand, toping Queensland’s 13 active cases and the 10 cases in South Australia and Western Australia.
Ms Ardern, speaking before Friday’s cabinet meeting, warned the current cluster was likely to grow before it was brought under control. A stage-three lockdown was imposed on Tuesday after the initial four cases were detected.
Health authorities on Thursday scoured a meat importation business in Auckland as speculation emerged the virus may have been imported from Victoria on frozen packaging. Three of the people who tested positive are employees at the Americold warehouse in the suburb of Mount Wellington. Seven other new cases are family members of the employees from the warehouse.
Another person who returned a positive test is an employee of the Mount Eden firm Finance Now.
Ms Ardern said the most likely cause of infection was person-to-person transmission, and she would not make a decision on the direction of lockdowns until she had more details on the spread and infection rate in the community.
“As we all learnt from our first experience with COVID, once you identify a cluster, it grows before it slows. We should expect that to be the case here,” Ms Ardern said. “We want to make a decision based on whether we have cases in a cluster or whether we can see cases not linked to a cluster. We’ll have a wide range of testing from the community before we make that decision.”
Long queues of cars lined Auckland streets as residents flocked to COVID testing centres and police ringed the city perimeter to prevent residents leaving.
Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield announced on Thursday that all 13 new community cases would be transferred to a quarantine centre.
The new community cases were linked to a South Auckland family of four, which all tested positive on Tuesday. Dr Bloomfield said it was only a “low possibility” the virus came in on freight.
A student at Auckland’s Mount Albert Grammar, a relative of the infected family, was among the new community infections.
The school has informed more than 100 students and a handful of staff who are considered close contacts of the infected student and told them to spend two weeks in self-isolation.
Another new case was found to have visited an aged-care centre in the Waikato region. That home has been closed off and is under strict quarantine measures.
The new case in managed isolation is a woman in her 30s who arrived from The Philippines on Saturday.
Under Auckland’s stage-three restrictions, schools and childcare centres are closed, except for children of essential workers. Some businesses have been forced to shut their doors to customers.
Gatherings are limited to 10 people and only permissible for weddings, funerals and tangihanga — traditional Maori funerals.
The rest of New Zealand has simultaneously shifted to less strict stage-two settings, where schools and businesses remain open but heightened hygiene and safety measures are advised.
At the end of April, New Zealand had 358 intensive care beds available, with capacity expected to reach 552 by July, supported by 334 ventilators.
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