New Zealand limits 2 million people after …

The New Zealand town of Auckland started this Monday a confinement for three days. The country’s authorities have decreed that 2 million people must stay at home to contain the first outbreak they detected of the UK variant of the coronavirus, which is very contagious.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern ordered a 72-hour lockdown in Auckland after discovering that three family members were infected in the city, the largest in the ocean country.

The schools and non-essential businesses were forced to close and residents were not allowed to leave the city except to buy food and meet other basic needs.

El Ministerio de Salud local informed that the secuenciación realized from las muestras de la familia demonstrated that dos de los casos estaban causados ​​por la variant that se detected por primera vez en el Reino Unido, mientras que todavía no se conocen los resultsados ​​de la third person.

“This result reinforces the decision to take swift and forceful action around the latest cases to detect and eradicate the possibility of any further transmission,” the health portfolio said in a statement.

It is first lockdown in New Zealand in almost six months. At the end of October last year, the Ministry of Health lifted the isolation during the discharge of the last patient with coronavirus. The country went into lockdown in August after 102 days without a COVID-19 case.

The Ardern administration – which was re-elected last year – has been praised for its handling of the pandemic: it only recorded 25 deaths in a population of five million people.

The rest of the country has been placed on a lower alert level, with the obligation to wear a face mask in public transport and meetings limited to 100 people maximum.