The current national lockdown in New Zealand, which was to be lifted overnight from Friday to Saturday, has finally been extended by four days. Authorities are on alert after the discovery of locally-sourced Covid-19 contamination this week in Auckland. The first in six months.
The virus has since spread to the capital Wellington. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern explained that all cases, including Wellington’s, were linked. A positive point. “This means that we are starting to get a feel for all” of the people concerned, she said, welcoming that “at this stage no unexpected cases have been recorded”.
Decision “difficult” in Australia
The inhabitants of Sydney in Australia, already confined for two months, will remain so for a while. “Unfortunately, the number of cases continues to increase,” said New South Wales Prime Minister Gladys Berejiklian, as the city now has more than 600 cases per day. Hence his “difficult” decision: the extension of confinement until the end of September.
Additionally, residents living in the hardest-hit parts of the city will be subject to a nighttime curfew and will only be able to go out for an hour a day for physical activity. About a thousand soldiers have been deployed to help police enforce measures that more and more residents are trying to break.
More than two-thirds of the population is not vaccinated in the two countries
In New Zealand, authorities are still trying to assess the scale of the epidemic. The Prime Minister urged the population to exercise caution. The archipelago has been praised abroad for its effective management of the Covid-19 epidemic which, so far, has only killed 26 people for a population of five million. However, the vaccination campaign is struggling to roll out, with around 20% of the population fully vaccinated so far.
In Australia, with the number of deaths continuing to rise and the virus spreading to other parts of the country, the authorities are rushing to vaccinate as many people as possible. To date, barely 30% of the population has received two doses of the vaccine. Authorities are particularly concerned about Aboriginal communities in remote areas of the Outback. The entire population of Wilcannia – a small town surrounded by several ancient Aboriginal sites – has been asked to get tested. A burial would be the source of a major source of contamination.
Authorities in New South Wales are facing growing anger from other Australian states, where cases linked to the Sydney outbreak have emerged. Since the start of the pandemic, Australia has recorded more than 42,000 cases of Covid-19 with nearly a thousand deaths.