Three new local cases of Covid-19 have been discovered in Auckland, New Zealand. prompting Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to order the city to go into lockdown.

Residents of Auckland will be required to stay at home for three days. The city’s almost 2 million residents will only be allowed to leave home for essential shopping and work. The BBC reports that schools and non-essential businesses will close.

PM Ardern said that the three days of lockdown would allow for more testing to be done and would also help determine if there was any community transmission. The rest of the country is to remain on a higher lockdown level, with schools and businesses remaining open. The BBC reports that Ardern said the country was going “hard and early.” Following New Zealand having closed its borders to almost all non-citizens last year March, early on in the pandemic, the country had gone months without community transmission.

With a population of five million, New Zealand has recorded just over 2 300 cases and 25 deaths, with PM Arden having been acknowledged for her management of the coronavirus pandemic.

Umm Muhammed Umar