Still unexplained
The hunt for the origins of Covid-19 has for the past four years been a tangled web of politics, power struggles, and international finger-pointing.
New Zealand on Thursday reported another new COVID-19 case, after the country registered two infections earlier this week for the first time in 24 days.
The new case was a man in his 60s who was in quarantine after arriving from Pakistan on June 13 on Air NZ 124 flight from Melbourne.
He developed symptoms on June 15.
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All passengers on the Air NZ flight will be contacted, according to the Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield.
The new infections are a set back to New Zealand, which lifted all social and economic restrictions except border controls last week, declaring it had no new or active cases of the coronavirus, one of the first countries in the world to return to pre-pandemic normality.
The total number of COVID-19 cases New Zealand is 1,507, while the death toll stood at 22.
Earlier, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had warned that new cases may come up in the future as New Zealanders return home, and some others were allowed in under special conditions.
Regarding the two COVID-19 cases reported on Tuesday, who were released from quarantine earlier than 14 days, to travel from Auckland to Wellington to visit a dying parent, Bloomfield said 90 per cent of the 364 contacts of the two patients had been contacted.
“There was a lapse in the process for us introducing the routine day three and day 12 testing in the latter part of last week, and I know that the case of these two women will have upset people and shaken people’s confidence,.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has described the emergence of the two COVID-19 cases “an unacceptable failure of the system”, while Bloomfield said that it was “a slip up in the process”.
On June 8, New Zealand lifted all domestic coronavirus restrictions after its final COVID-19 patient was given the all clear.
Earlier, Ardern had said that the sacrifices made by New Zealanders, including a drastic seven-week lockdown that helped curb infection rates, had been rewarded now that there were no active cases in the country.
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