New Zealand health officials said Thursday they had identified 14 new coronavirus cases as the country tackles a fresh outbreak that ended a run of more than 100 days without any locally transmitted infections.
Officials also warned they were likely to find more cases.
“We are fully expecting there will be further cases,” New Zealand’s Director General of Health Dr. Ashley Bloomfield said at a news conference Thursday.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern reiterated that sentiment.
“As we all learnt from our first experience with Covid, once you identify a cluster it grows before it slows. We should expect that to be the case here,” she said
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All but one of the cases are locally transmitted, and are connected with four confirmed cases in Auckland, the country’s most populous city. The other case is a woman in managed isolation who recently entered the country from the Philippines.
Of the 13 cases that are locally transmitted, three patients are employees at Americold, a cool storage facility where one of the previously reported cases worked. Seven of the cases are family members of Americold employees.
One school student also tested positive for the virus, Bloomfield said. The student is a close contact of one of the four cases reported on Tuesday.
What’s happening in New Zealand: On the weekend, the country — which has been held up as an example of how to combat the virus — marked 100 days without any locally transmitted infections.
But that streak came to an end this week. On Tuesday, New Zealand announced four new locally-transmitted cases — and on Wednesday, Auckland went into a level 3 lockdown for three days.
Parliament was set to be dissolved Wednesday ahead of the country’s national election in September, but it was postponed. Ardern hasn’t announced whether she will postpone the election, which is scheduled for September 19.
New Zealand has recorded more than 1,200 confirmed coronavirus cases, including 22 deaths.