New Zealand goes into nationwide three-day lockdown after single Covid case

New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern has put the nation into a three-day lockdown after the discovery of the first community case of Covid-19 since February.

The snap lockdownbegan at midnight on Tuesday (1pm Irish time) as authorities rushed to identify the source of a single infection in the country's largest city Auckland, Ms Ardern said at a news conference in Wellington.

While genome sequencing had yet to be completed, the case was assumed to be the highly infectious Delta variant, she said.

“Delta has been a game-changer, we’re responding to that,” Ms Ardern said. “The best thing we can do to get out of this as quickly as we can is to go hard.”

‘Big Jab Weekend’ announced to boost North’s vaccination drive

---

‘Unclear’ if vaccinated staff can get welfare when self-isolating, Isme says

---

GP urges Covid-19 vaccine cert for those hit by acute first-dose reaction

---

Republic’s air travel hits 50% of pre-pandemic traffic

---

It is New Zealand’s first nationwide lockdown since the initial pandemic response over a year ago.

Under the country’s alert level 4, all schools, public venues and most businesses must close and people are urged to wear a face covering if they need to venture out. Only shops providing essential services such as groceries, petrol and health products can stay open.

The case is an unvaccinated man in his 50s from Auckland who is deemed to have been infectious since August. 12th, New Zealand’s director general of health, Ashley Bloomfield, told the news conference.

The man and his fully vaccinated wife were in the nearby Coromandel region over the weekend, where they visited a crowded pub on Saturday night to watch an All Blacks rugby game, Mr Bloomfield said.

Nationwide response

Both Auckland and the Coromandel have been placed into lockdown for seven days. Because of those movements and the probability of it being the Delta variant, officials advised an immediate nationwide response, Ms Ardern said.

“Going hard and early has worked for us before,” she said. “We want to be short and hard, rather than light and long.”

New Zealand has so far largely kept the virus out of the community, allowing its economy to recover quickly during the pandemic. But a slow vaccine rollout has left it vulnerable to another outbreak, particularly of the Delta variant, which has forced large parts of Australia back into lockdown.

Australia’s Delta outbreak continues to spread despite more than half the nation’s 26 million people being placed into lockdown.

New South Wales state recorded 452 new cases on Tuesday after a record of 478 set the previous day, with the vast bulk of those infections detected in Sydney.

Australia’s most-populous city has been in lockdown for more than seven weeks, and some health experts have criticised the New South Wales government for entering the lockdown after the virus was already seeded in the community. – Reuters