New Zealand a few days back had boasted about being free of new coronavirus infections for 100 days. But the chain has now been broken and the country has now reported some new infections. An announcement was made by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on August 11, 2020 that the authorities have found four confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Auckland. The recent infections has forced the authorities to implement a three-day full lockdown.
People will be asked to stay at home and the bars and other businesses will be closed. Ardern, in an urgently called conference said that the three days will give them time to access the actual situation and gather information to make sure that they conduct a wide-spread contact tracing to find out how the new cases arose. The Prime Minister added that they will be taking decisions on how to respond once they have more information.
Adern also expressed that this information is going to be very difficult to receive and that everyone had hoped not to find themselves in this situation again. However the Prime Minister also said that they were prepared for it. The new cases mark the first local transmissions of the coronavirus in New Zealand in 102 days.
The PM also said that as a part of the preventive measure people will be banned from travelling to Auckland unless people live there. People in the rest of the country will be raised to level 2 which means that mass gatherings will not be limited to just 100 people and they will also need t maintain a social distance from each other. Talking about the infected patient, the person is aged in 50s and had went to the doctor on August 10 with symptoms and was tested twice and came out positive both times. Later six other people in the same household were also tested, out of whom three more people are infected.
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