Three workers at a refrigerated warehouse in Auckland have tested positive to coronavirus, taking New Zealand’s total number of COVID-19 infections to eight.
The new cases were diagnosed at a warehouse run by US-based company Americold.
The company’s Australia and New Zealand managing director, Richard Winnall, said they all worked alongside a man in his 50s who had already tested positive to the virus.
All staff from the facility have been placed in isolation, he said.
Earlier, a student at an Auckland secondary school was also confirmed to have COVID-19.
Mount Albert Grammar School principal Patrick Drumm said he was informed of the positive case on Wednesday night.
Auckland is has been locked down until at least midnight Friday following the discovery of the first cases of community transmission in the country in more than 100 days on Tuesday.
Earlier, New Zealand health officials said it was only a matter of time before they got to the bottom of the mystery new outbreak.
Contact tracing, isolation and testing is crucial in New Zealand which – unlike other countries – is pursuing an elimination strategy of the virus.
It proved stunningly successful back in autumn, when a 51-day lockdown eradicated the virus from the community and allowed Kiwis to live lives free of any restrictions, aside from border controls.
Since then, any cases in NZ have been identified within the mandatory isolation regime at the border.
That was until Tuesday, when the first positive cases in the community rocked Aucklanders.
Dr Bloomfield said isolation of any close or casual contacts to positive cases was the primary response to the outbreak.
“Only by doing that will we be able to contain it. Also that will also give us great clues as to what the source might have been,” he said.
“We will find the source, I have no doubt about that.”
The outbreak has also returned New Zealanders to a lockdown tradition; waiting for Ms Ardern’s daily 1pm press conference to learn the numbers of new cases.
The government will decide at a crunch Cabinet meeting on Friday whether to extend or deepen the lockdown, a decision largely based on case numbers.
It must also consider whether to postpone a national election slated for September 19.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson said the government would also look at new economic assistance as needed.
-with agencies
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