Wellington New Zealand rushed to trace the source of a sudden return of the coronavirus Thursday as the number of new cases in its largest city rose to 17. Officials warned that more infections were unforgettable.
National Health Chief Ashley Bloomfield said there were 13 newly confirmed infections in Auckland, all linked to four family members found on Tuesday, ending the country’s record of 102 days without community transmission.
De surge in new cases raised the prospect that a three-day lockdown in Auckland would be extended from noon Wednesday as teams of health workers on the hunt searched for the cluster’s origins and increased tests in the city.
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Bloomfield said among the new cases was a student at one of New Zealand’s largest secondary schools, attended by more than 3,000 children.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said there were likely to be more cases at the recent spike.
“Like with our first outbreak, things will get worse before they get better,” she said in a television address.
Ardern was encouraged by the fact that so far all cases in a single cluster were confined to Auckland.
“You can see the seriousness of the situation,” she said. “Although it is serious, it is being treated in an urgent but calm and methodical way.”
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Bloomfield said authorities are urgently investigating all possible routes of transmission.
“We want to find out how big it is as soon as possible, so we have all the close contacts, casual contacts, workplace, family-related tests,” he told TVNZ.
“This is what we want to do as soon as possible to find out how widespread the outbreak is and who the first case may have been.”
It was “when, not when.”
Auckland’s lockdown is scheduled to end last Friday and Bloomfield said any decision on the extension depends on what the investigations uncovered over the next 24 hours.
“It’s too early to say … we’ll have a lot more information tomorrow,” he said.
He played one research line and investigated whether the virus was imported by freight, and was then picked up by a male family member, who worked in a cool room for imported goods.
“It’s a possibility. It’s not likely, but it’s something we need to rule out,” Bloomfield said, adding that another focus was when the infection came from managed isolation facilities.
These facilities, especially hotels and motels that are closed to the general public, house thousands of newcomers from abroad, with positive cases placed in stricter quarantine.
Bloomfield said COVID-19 cases found in the community, along with some at-risk family members, were now also quarantined for the first time, instead of being allowed to isolate themselves at home.
“It will help us prevent further unintended spread in the community,” he said.
Despite New Zealand’s past success in catching the virus – with just 22 deaths in a population of five million – Bloomfield said health authorities had always expected such a return, even if it had surprised some people.
“Yes, we were nuanced and that’s why our message has been circulating the last few weeks to prevent that,” he said. “As you will recall, last week I talked about when, not when.”
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