New Zealand: 14 new Covid-19 cases reported after 102 days of no new cases

New Zealand reports 14 new Covid-19 cases The country's biggest city, Auckland, is back in lockdown after a family cluster emerged. BBC News

The detection of four new infected family members earlier this week shocked a country that had recorded no locally transmitted cases for more than three months.

Of the new cases, 13 have been linked back to this family, while one is an overseas arrival who was in quarantine.

A three-day lockdown was imposed in Auckland on Wednesday.

"We can see the seriousness of the situation we are in," Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in a news conference.

"It’s being dealt with in an urgent but calm and methodical way."

All the confirmed cases will now go into quarantine, said officials. Some of their contacts may also be quarantined...

Before Tuesday, New Zealand went 102 days without recording a locally transmitted case of Covid-19, one of the few countries to reach such a milestone.

Ms Ardern has also said she expects the outbreak to grow further before it slows down.

Health workers have been racing to find the origin of this latest cluster, testing family and work contacts of the newly infected.

The 13 new infections traced to four family members include:

• Employees of an Auckland storage facility where one of the four infected relatives worked
• Relatives of those colleagues
• A pupil at a local school
• An employee of a loan company linked to the family and one of the employee's relatives....

"We are working flat out to do the contact-tracing we need to do and trace back to find out what the source of this infection is," national health chief Ashley Bloomfield told Newstalk ZB radio...