New Zealand to maintain COVID-19 measures until Sep. 14

Sydney, Australia, Sep 4 (efe-epa).- Restrictions imposed in New Zealand after the outbreak of COVID-19 in Auckland, which emerged in mid-August after 102 days free of local infections, will continue until at least mid-month, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Friday.

In a day in which New Zealand registered five new infections, three of which local transmission, Ardern told reporters in Wellington that it would maintain alert level 2, of a maximum of 4, as well as the strictest containment in Auckland.

The measure will be reviewed again Sep. 14.

The president justified the decision to maintain the alert by emphasizing the origin of local infections in Auckland, the country’s most populated city with about 1.7 million inhabitants, has not been identified, although it is known that the virus re-entered the country by the border.

“All infections come from a single index case,” Ardern said, referring to the origin of the COVID-19 outbreak in Auckland, first detected in four members of a family at a time when the country had not registered local infections for months.

The New Zealand government imposed the lockdown in Auckland and raised the alert to level 2 in the rest of the country on August 12, two days after a new coronavirus outbreak occurred after 102 days without local infections across the country.

New Zealand, whose government was applauded worldwide for managing the pandemic with the application last March of one of the strictest confinements in the world and the closure of its borders when it had 50 cases, accumulates 1,413 infections, of which 22 resulted in deaths and 112 are still active. EFE-EPA

wat/lds