Australia has abruptly stopped the green zone travel bubble with New Zealand as Auckland begins a three day lockdown.
The ‘green zone’ bubble between the two countries will have new restrictions from Monday, after Auckland was moved to an Alert Level Three Covid-19 lockdown.
The 72 hour lockdown comes after three people from one family tested positive for Covid-19, with the source of the infections still unknown.
An urgent meeting to discuss the three day lockdown was convened by Australia’s Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly with Chief Health Officers from New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria.
It has been announced that all flights originating in New Zealand will be classified as ‘red zone’ flights for an initial 72 hours from 12.01am on February 15, in a statement from the office of the Chief Medical Officer.
‘As a result of this, all people arriving on such flights originating within this three-day period will need to go into 14 days of supervised hotel quarantine.’
Each Australian State will determine their own procedure for anyone who has already arrived in Australia from New Zealand and may pose a risk of transmitting the virus.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced that Auckland will be locked down for three days after three positive Covid tests were announced on Sunday.
Aucklanders will enter a three-day lockdown after recording three new cases of community transmission for the first time in 21 days. Pictured: Nurses speak to people waiting in line outside a pop up Covid-19 testing station in Freyberg Place in November
The last recorded cases of community transmission were 21 days ago.
Three members of a south Auckland family – a father, mother and daughter – tested positive for the virus.
On Sunday afternoon Ardern announced that Auckland would move to level three restrictions from 11.59pm tonight for three days, meaning residents would not be free to move around until midnight on Wednesday.
The Prime Minister appeared on Facebook with a message for residents, where she explained the New Zealand government’s ‘cautious approach’ to the new cases.
The mother’s employer LSG Sky Chefs, an airport laundry and catering facility at Auckland airport, has been listed as an exposure site
Ms Ardern said it was ‘a big change in circumstance’ for the country and urged people to get tested, and stay at home as much as possible for the next 72 hours.
‘We’re in a position at the moment where we haven’t quite identified whether or not the household cases that we picked up, whether or not there are any beyond that.
‘Secondly, of course, if there are cases beyond that whether or not those and any individuals have travelled.’
The Prime Minister said that due to the long weekends across the country during the isolation period ‘a lot of people’ had been travelling around.
‘It’s essentially us trying to just make sure that we are taking a precautionary approach given how much travel there has been over this period and given we quite haven’t put a ring around this case just yet’.
Covid-19 Minister Chris Hipkins said health officials were moving rapidly to test and isolate close contacts.
‘There is a number of gaps in our knowledge around these cases,’ he said.
The mother works at works at LSG Sky Chefs, an airport laundry and catering facility at Auckland airport, while the daughter is a student at Papatoetoe High School.
The venues along with supermarket Pak n Save Manukau, in Cavendish Drive, have been listed as exposure sites, Stuff reported earlier on Sunday.
The school is undergoing deep cleaning and will be closed on Monday and Tuesday as a precaution, with a testing facility to be set up on the campus.
Another family member from their household is currently undergoing testing.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (pictured) has returned to Wellington for briefings after three members of a South Auckland family tested positive
Papatoetoe High School (pictured) has been closed and a testing facility will be erected on the campus for members of the school community
Health authorities are conducting genomic sequencing on the family to determine whether they are infected with one of the more transmissible variants reported overseas.
Another case of coronavirus was recorded on Sunday in managed isolation, bringing the daily total to four.
Manukau ward councillor Alf Filipaina has urged members of the community to come forward for testing.
‘In south Auckland, our community are just more vulnerable than any other,’ he said.
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‘I’m saying to people, get tested, it has to be. We don’t want to end up to where we were (during the last outbreak).’
The new cases come a day after New Zealand’s first Covid-related death in five months and three weeks since the country’s last case of community transmission, a woman who tested positive on January 24 after leaving hotel quarantine.
On Saturday, Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said a person tested positive for the virus while in mandatory isolation died after being moved to North Shore Hospital in Auckland.
The fatality was New Zealand’s 26th Covid-related death since the start of the pandemic.
Sunday’s infections are the first locally acquired cases in New Zealand since January 24 Pictured: A person walks through the CBD on October 8 in Auckland
