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
Over 1,400 Indonesians left Cambodian scam groups in five days: embassy
- Scammers working from hubs across Southeast Asia lure Internet users globally into fake romances and cryptocurrency investments
- Some foreign nationals have evacuated suspected scam compounds across Cambodia this month
PHNOM PENH: More than 1,400 Indonesians have left cyberscam networks in Cambodia in the last five days, Jakarta said on Wednesday, after Phnom Penh pledged a fresh crackdown on the illicit trade.
Scammers working from hubs across Southeast Asia, some willingly and others trafficked, lure Internet users globally into fake romances and cryptocurrency investments, netting tens of billions of dollars each year.
Some foreign nationals have evacuated suspected scam compounds across Cambodia this month as the government pledged to “eliminate” problems related to the online fraud industry, which the United Nations says employs at least 100,000 people in Cambodia alone.
Between January 16-20, 1,440 Indonesians left sites operated by online scam syndicates around Cambodia and went to the Indonesian embassy in Phnom Penh for help, the mission said in a statement.
The “largest wave of arrivals” occurred on Monday when 520 Indonesians came to the embassy, it said.
Recent Cambodian law enforcement measures against scam operators meant more citizens would likely continue showing up at the embassy, it added.
“The main problem for them is that they do not possess passports and they are staying in Cambodia without valid immigration permits,” according to the embassy.
It urged Indonesians leaving scam sites to report to the embassy, which could assist them with securing travel documents and overstay fine waivers in order to return home.
Indonesia said this week that its embassy in Phnom Penh handled more than 5,000 consular service cases for citizens in Cambodia last year — more than 80 percent of which were related to Indonesians who “admitted to being involved with online scam syndicates.”
Cambodia arrested and deported Chinese-born tycoon Chen Zhi, accused of running Internet scam operations from Cambodia, to China this month.
Chen, a former adviser to Cambodia’s leaders, was indicted by US authorities in October.
Analysts say Chen’s extradition has left some of those running Internet scams from Cambodia fearing legal consequences — after the criminal enterprises ballooned for years — with some operators opting to release people or evacuate their compounds.
