New Zealand Reports Fresh Cases After 102 Days Of Declaring COVID-Free

Auckland: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Tuesday revealed that four new cases of COVID-19 have been found in one home here and the source is unknown. This is the first reported case of local transmission in the country after 102 days.

The alert was moved to level 3 in the city from Wednesday and that means people will be staying at home and non-essential business will be shut. Travelling in and out of Auckland will be banned for people not living there.

The rest of the island nation will see the alert level rise to level 2, in which social distancing has to be undertaken and gatherings have to be limited to 100 people.

“These three days will give us time to assess the situation, gather information, make sure we have widespread contact tracing so we can find out more about how this case arose and make decisions about how to respond to it once we have further information,” Ardern said.

“I know that this information will be very difficult to receive,” Ardern said. “We had all hoped not to find ourselves in this position again. But we had also prepared for it. And as a team, we have also been here before,” she added.

The new cases are a person in his 50s and 3 other family members. They do not have a history of foreign travel.

So far, the country had only about 100 cases and was declared COVID-free earlier in June allowing rubgy games and bars to reopen.