COVID-19: New Zealand records first community case in two months
New Zealand has recorded its first case of COVID-19 in the community in more than two months.
Health officials said a 56-year-old woman who returned from Europe tested positive 10 days after completing a two-week quarantine in the north of Auckland.
The new infection has raised fears of a potential lockdown as the woman reportedly visited at least 30 different locations after her quarantine.
She had been in Europe — mainly in Spain and the Netherlands — for about four months and completed her compulsory quarantine on January 13.
The ministry of health was quoted as saying she had tested negative twice before leaving isolation, but started developing mild symptoms two days after.
Chris Hipkins, the country’s minister of health, said on Sunday that it was too soon to know the “origin or the strain of the infection”.
Hipkins, however, added that the government is “working on the assumption any case might be a more transmissible variant and [was] taking appropriate precautions”.
New Zealand is one of the best ranked countries on how they have responded to the coronavirus pandemic.
The country has so far confirmed 2,283 cases of the virus out of which 2,179 have recovered with only 25 deaths recorded.
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