New Zealand Auckland to move back to Alert Level 3
- by Carmen Reese
- in Science
- — Feb 28, 2021
Goods had been baked and were ready to go to farmers' markets across Auckland starting at 7am this morning, until an announcement by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at 9pm last night put Auckland into alert level 3 from 6am today.
A new Covid-19 case in New Zealand has raised alert levels in the country and disrupted the men's and women's bilateral series against Australia and England respectively.
Health authorities were trying to find out whether the new case was linked to the earlier February cluster, now at 12 infections.
The case, known as Case M, is an older sibling of a Papatoetoe High School student who was a casual plus contact.
However, Ms Ardern said that student has tested negative for coronavirus multiple times.
There are no new Covid-19 cases in the community, director general of health Ashley Bloomfield says. She said police will get involved if people are breaching the rules of self-isolating.
Checkpoints were set up in Te Hana in the north of Auckland during the last three-day alert level 3 lockdown. The new case's mother also tested positive on Saturday.
Director-General of Health announces no new cases of Covid-19 but Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern warns it is "highly likely' more are coming". She said New Zealanders had enjoyed more freedoms than any other country in the OECD.
Bloomfield said officials were seeing "unpredictability" with this variant.
For the rest of New Zealand under Level two restrictions, people are able to socialise in groups of up to 100, shop and travel domestically.
Ardern said that's because the United Kingdom variant of Covid-19 seems to have a "longer tail", that is, infections may not emerge until later.
She also said the Government won't amplify that message.
She said a "number of events" had been affected by the new alert levels, she was "devastated for the fans", but Covid meant the events had to be cancelled.
"When we ask people to self-isolate, that means stay at home - no interactions with anyone else".
A list of locations of interest for contact tracing can be found below. The patient went to a family doctor for a Covid test on Friday and then went to the gym after that, the New Zealand Herald reported.
