New Zealand’s first coronavirus case in six months sends country into lockdown

One coronavirus case. That’s all it took to send New Zealand into a three-day, nationwide lockdown late Tuesday as the country’s six-month streak without local transmission came to an end. Auckland, the largest city, where the new case was detected, is likely to be shut down for seven days.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she was ordering the country’s harshest shutdown in more than a year given the strong likelihood that the case was the more infectious delta variant, with genomic test results expected overnight. She appealed to New Zealanders not to go out unnecessarily.

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