WELLINGTON: New Zealand on Wednesday (Oct 21) reported two new cases of COVID-19 in the community linked to a port worker who tested positive over the weekend, and 23 imported cases.
Most of the imported cases are linked to a group of Russian and Ukrainian fishermen who were staying at a managed isolation facility in Christchurch, the director general of health, Ashley Bloomfield, said.
This takes New Zealand’s total confirmed cases to 1,556, he said.
The port worker, whom the latest community cases are linked to, tested positive on Sunday, two weeks after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared the country had “beat the virus again”.
Sunday’s reported infection also came a day after Ardern’s Labour Party won a landslide election victory, with her government’s handling of the pandemic widely credited as a factor.
Ahead of the vote, Ardern – whose party won 64 seats in the 120-seat parliament – had dubbed it “the COVID election”.
She campaigned on her government’s success in eliminating community transmission of the virus, which has caused just 25 deaths in a population of five million.
New Zealand declared in May it has beaten community coronavirus transmission, although a new cluster emerged in Auckland in August forcing the country’s largest city back into lockdown for several weeks.
Last Friday, hundreds of New Zealand plane passengers flew into Sydney as part of a new trans-Tasman travel bubble
In a tentative reopening to international tourism, authorities had said travellers on the approved flights would not be required to quarantine in Sydney.
