Via The Guardian: New Zealand national lockdown extended as Covid outbreak spreads to Wellington. Excerpt:
The whole of New Zealand will remain in lockdown until midnight Tuesday, prime minister Jacinda Ardern has announced, as the country’s coronavirus outbreak grew to 31 people and spread to Wellington.
The first case in the outbreak emerged in Auckland on Tuesday, prompting the government to put the entire country into a level-4 lockdown – the highest level of restrictions. Genome sequencing has linked the cluster to a returnee from Australia.
Since then, some of the cases that have emerged include a high school teacher, students at two more high schools, a nurse at Auckland City Hospital and an Air New Zealand cabin crew member.
Another 11 cases were announced on Friday, including a patient at Auckland’s North Shore Hospital, which forced the emergency care and short-stay surgical care departments to close, and a postal worker.
Nineteen of the cases are linked to the first case, a 58-year-old man. The Air New Zealand worker is not linked, while the rest of the cases are yet to be genome-sequenced. Initial investigations show they are likely to be connected to the first case.
The Wellington cases announced on Friday had visited locations of interest in Auckland before returning to the capital prior to the lockdown.
Initially, Auckland and the Coromandel peninsula, a nearby area visited by the first case, were placed into lockdown for a week, with the rest of the country locked down for three days. The whole country is now in lockdown for the same period.
