New Zealand enters national lockdown
The streets are deserted in Wellington as New Zealand imposes a snap three-day lockdown after identifying a single case of locally transmitted Covid-19 suspected to be the Delta variant.
After nine more positive tests, New Zealanders are bracing for additional Covid-19 cases from an outbreak that has plunged the previously virus-free country into a snap lockdown.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jecinda Ardern confirmed that the country was dealing with the highly transmissible Delta variant linked to the outbreak in Australia that authorities have so far been unable to contain.
Ardern said the rapid rise, taking the total number of cases to 10, justified her decision to issue nationwide stay-at-home orders Tuesday when just one case had been identified.
The initial infection, a 58-year-old Auckland man, ended a six-month run without local transmission in New Zealand, which has recorded only 26 Covid-19 deaths in a population of five million since the start of the pandemic.
Ardern said investigators were trying to work out how the man caught the strain linked to Australia.
The national lockdown -- New Zealand's first in 15 months -- is scheduled to last three days, with Auckland and the nearby Coromandel area facing restrictions for a week.
