New Zealand's COVID-19 outbreak spreads to capital Wellington

New Zealand's coronavirus outbreak grew to 31 people and spread to capital Wellington.

The first case in the outbreak emerged in Auckland on Tuesday as the government put the entire country into a level-4 lockdown, which meansthe highest level of restrictions.

As per genome sequencing, the cluster has been linked to a returnee from Australia.

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Ever since then, some of the cases that have emerged include a high school teacher, students at two more high schools, a nurse at Auckland City Hospital and an Air New Zealand cabin crew member.

On Friday, another 11 cases were announced, including a patient at Auckland’s North Shore Hospital.

This forced the emergency care and short-stay surgical care departments to close, and a postal worker.

A total of 19 of the cases are linked to the first case, which is a 58-year-old man.

The Air New Zealand worker is not linked, while the rest of the cases are yet to be genome-sequenced.

Initial investigations show they are likely to be connected to the first case.

On Friday afternoon, Jacinda Ardern said the infectious period of the emerging positive cases still reached back into the period before lockdown. She said, "Soon, that should stop being the case, and that will definitely help us get that outbreak under control. Until then, though, we just don’t quite know the full scale of this Delta outbreak.

“This tells us we need to continue to be cautious, and that we need more time before we have the complete picture.”