COVID-19: New Zealand sees surge in Delta variant, logs 60 new community cases

New Zealand has displayed a sudden surge in COVID-19 Delta variant cases since mid-August. As of Wednesday, the country logged 60 new cases of COVID-19 in a community outbreak, the NZ Ministry of Health said in a statement. The current developments have pushed the overall tally to around 2,158. On Wednesday itself, there were 60 new community cases of COVID-19 to report today; 56 in Auckland and four in Waikato. As of 10 am, 38 of these cases are linked and 22 remain unlinked, with investigations continuing to help determine their connection to the outbreak, the health bulletin mentioned. About 1,957 cases have been linked to another case or a sub-cluster epidemiologically, while or another 166 cases are to be fully established.

Public health officials are modifying the approach to suburban testing following an increase in cases, particularly on the North Shore and New Lynn, the Ministry of Health mentioned. "As the outbreak is now more disbursed, the approach is moving away from suburbs of interest and will instead concentrate on areas with higher positivity rates where the risk of unidentified cases is higher," the statement added.

Meanwhile, four new cases were reported in the Waikato region, two in Te Awamutu. The infected people are said to be "contacts of known cases" and are already isolating. "Investigations to determine how the other two cases are linked to the outbreak are underway. This brings the total number of cases in the Waikato to 56; 10 of whom have recovered," the statement added.

NZ abandons the 'zero COVID' strategy

On October 5, NZ abandoned its "zero COVID" strategy due to the persistent Delta variant outbreak. After living with one of the world's strictest policies against COVID-19, NZ PM Jacinda Ardern, during an interview with New York Times, said that the country would no longer pursue an approach to completely eliminate cases.

"We are transitioning from our current strategy into a new way of doing things. With Delta, every time 20 is incredibly difficult and our restrictions alone are not enough to achieve that quickly. In fact, for this outbreak it is clear that long periods of heavy restrictions had not got us to zero cases," PM Ardern said while speaking to reporters on October 4.

Last week she announced that Auckland will observe a gradual lift of lockdown despite the spike in cases. However, on Monday she reversed the comments to assert that the largest city of Australia and parts of Waikato will remain under level 3 lockdowns for another two weeks, while the rest of NZ will stay with level 2.

Image: AP/PIXABAY