It’s only taken one national case of Covid-19 for New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Arden to put the country under a three-day lockdown.
A spokesperson for New Zealand’s Ministry of Health stated on Tuesday that a 58-year-old unvaccinated man had tested positive for Covid-19 after stating he had symptoms of the virus. Currently, medical experts are “assuming this is the delta variant,” but this is yet to be confirmed.
“We have seen what can happen elsewhere if we fail to get on top of it,” Arden said in a public address. “We only get one chance. That’s why cabinet has met this afternoon and made the decision that New Zealand will move to alert Level IV from 11:59pm tonight.
“Level IV will be for an initial period of three days, except for Auckland and the Coromandel Peninsula who we anticipate will be in this alert level for seven days due to them being more closely linked to our current case.”
Arden continued to call on New Zealand’s population of around five million people to combat the threat that coronavirus possesses with 26 reported deaths and under 3,000 cases reported in NZ since the pandemic.