| useruserB said: It's back! "New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Tuesday that authorities have found four cases of the coronavirus in one Auckland household from an unknown source, the first reported cases of local transmission in the country in 102 days." https://apnews.com/91f21b7222b544ead4f1a7888d8dcdaa
Looks like it's impossible to completely wipe out, oh well glad they really tried though. But employing common sense and mitigation is still the best way forward. Doing so slows the spread and reduces the severity of the disease, at least the evidence/data suggests so. |
It must have come back in from the border
Until Tuesday, the only known cases of the virus in New Zealand were 22 travellers who had recently returned from abroad and were being held in quarantine at the border.
The tests aren't 100% accurate, they must have missed a returning traveler case. Someone could also have been infected just before returning and still in the early incubation time while getting back in the country. Not far enough along to be detected with a nasal swab. If that person only has/had very mild symptoms they might not have bothered to quarantine or still had it after the 2 week period. Even mild to no symptoms can linger on. The incubation period also has outliers, up to 3 weeks. Thus even with a 2 week mandatory quarantine you don't have a 100% guarantee not to get the virus back in. But enough to get 102 days rest!
New Zealand is responding immediately though, unlike most countries that have a wait until it gets bad approach.
Ardern said Auckland, the nation's largest city, will be moved to Alert Level 3 from midday Wednesday through midnight Friday, meaning that people will be asked to stay at home, while bars and many other businesses will be closed. “These three days will give us time to assess the situation, gather information, make sure we have widespread contact tracing so we can find out more about how this case arose and make decisions about how to respond to it once we have further information,” Ardern said at a hastily called news conference late Tuesday.
“I know that this information will be very difficult to receive,” Ardern said. “We had all hoped not to find ourselves in this position again. But we had also prepared for it. And as a team, we have also been here before.” She said that travelling into Auckland will be banned unless people live there and are travelling home. She said the rest of the country will be raised to Level 2 through Friday, meaning that mass gatherings will be limited to 100 attendees and people would need to socially distance themselves from each other.
You can't get rid of it completely unless you close the border completely :/ There are simply too many active infections in the world.
