WELLINGTON: A lockdown in the New Zealand city of Auckland will end at midnight, the government announced Wednesday after concluding a coronavirus outbreak had been contained.
“This is good news,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said.
The nation’s largest city was put into lockdown on Sunday after three unexplained cases were found in the community. It was the first lockdown in six months in a nation which so far has managed to successfully stamp out the spread of the disease.
The move to end the lockdown came as health authorities said the outbreak had grown by three cases to six in total. But Ardern said the additional cases were to be expected because they involved close contacts.
Ramped-up testing indicates the outbreak hasn’t spread far. Laboratories processed more than 17,000 individual tests on Tuesday, authorities said, and they also tested wastewater samples, which came back negative.
“What this tells us is that we don’t have a widespread outbreak, but rather a small chain of transmission which is manageable by our normal contact-tracing and testing procedures,” Ardern said.
The initial cases were a mother, a father, and their 13-year-old daughter, who attends a local high school. Health authorities said the three new cases were a high school classmate, who was a close contact of the daughter, and two family members of the classmate.
Senior lawmakers in the Cabinet who met Wednesday afternoon decided most Aucklanders could go back to work and school from Thursday, but they would still leave some restrictions in place until at least Monday.
Genome testing has shown the family caught a more contagious variant first found in Britain.
The mother who caught the disease works at a catering company that does laundry for airlines. Officials have been investigating whether there is any link to infected passengers, but so far haven’t been able to find a direct connection or explain how the outbreak might have begun.
New Zealand ends lockdown after deciding coronavirus outbreak contained
https://arab.news/ztxuv
New Zealand ends lockdown after deciding coronavirus outbreak contained
- The nation’s largest city was put into lockdown on Sunday after three unexplained cases were found in the community
- Additional cases were to be expected because they involved close contacts
Bangladesh’s religio-political party open to unity govt
- Opinion polls suggest that Jamaat-e-Islami will finish a close second to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party in the first election it has contested in nearly 17 years
DHAKA: A once-banned Bangladeshi religio-political party, poised for its strongest electoral showing in February’s parliamentary vote, is open to joining a unity government and has held talks with several parties, its chief said.
Opinion polls suggest that Jamaat-e-Islami will finish a close second to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party in the first election it has contested in nearly 17 years as it marks a return to mainstream politics in the predominantly Muslim nation of 175 million.
Jamaat last held power between 2001 and 2006 as a junior coalition partner with the BNP and is open to working with it again.
“We want to see a stable nation for at least five years. If the parties come together, we’ll run the government together,” Jamaat chief Shafiqur Rahman said in an interview at his office in a residential area in Dhaka, days after the party created a buzz by securing a tie-up with a Gen-Z party.
Rahman said anti-corruption must be a shared agenda for any unity government.
The prime minister will come from the party winning the most seats in the Feb. 12 election, he added. If Jamaat wins the most seats, the party will decide whether he himself would be a candidate, Rahman said.
The party’s resurgence follows the ousting of long-time Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in a youth-led uprising in August 2024.
Rahman said Hasina’s continued stay in India after fleeing Dhaka was a concern, as ties between the two countries have hit their lowest point in decades since her downfall.
Asked about Jamaat’s historical closeness to Pakistan, Rahman said: “We maintain relations in a balanced way with all.”
He said any government that includes Jamaat would “not feel comfortable” with President Mohammed Shahabuddin, who was elected unopposed with the Awami League’s backing in 2023.
