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February 27, 2021 - New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that the country's largest city, Auckland, will fall into a seven-day lockdown after reporting a new local case of Covid-19 of unknown origin.
The decision comes two weeks after the last closure, which lasted three days, when cases of the British variant were detected in a family of three in the city of nearly 2 million.
Health authorities confirmed that they learned how the person was infected and that genome sequencing of the new infection is underway.
They added that the patient developed symptoms on Tuesday and has been considered potentially contagious since Sunday.
Also, during that time, he would have frequented several public places.
The health authorities are therefore trying to find out if the new case is linked to the previous cluster in February, which reached 12 infections.
"Based on this information - said Ardern - we are in the unfortunate but necessary position of having to protect the citizens of Auckland again." According to the measures set out by the New Zealand prime minister, the lockdown with level 3 restrictions will allow people to leaving home only for essential shopping and work, and public places will remain closed. In the rest of the country, restrictions will be tightened to level 2, including limits on public gatherings. New Zealand has recorded just over 2,000 cases of coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic.