Delta Variant: New Zealand re-enacts quarantine for single case | After six months without positive indigenous cases

After six months without a new indigenous positive case of Covid-19, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, declared a three-day lockdown across the country after discovering a local case. “We have seen what can happen in other places if we don’t control the situation. We only have one chance,” said Ardern in the face of the danger of the Delta variant.

The lockdown, which began on Tuesday evening, aims to eradicate any suspicion of the Delta variant infection for a country which, according to the Johns Hopkins University investigation, has only 2,927 cases since the start of the pandemic and 26 deaths. In contrast, the level of immunization reaches only 20 percent of the population.

“This is a game-changer,” the senior official said in a national channel post, citing the detection of a single positive indigenous case among a population of 5 million. For more than a year, the oceanic country has not experienced any national confinement and life had resumed its course almost normally.

The announcements call for New Zealand to be confined for three days from Tuesday evening. But there is a geographical difference for the application of the measure: Auckland and the neighboring Coromandel region will be for a week.

The decision taken by Ardern coincides with the return of restrictions to its neighbor Australia, where a curfew has been announced for the city of Melbourne and strict containment in the state of New South Wales, where Sydney is located. .