Australia shuts out New Zealanders over Auckland COVID-19 outbreak concerns

Australia shuts out New Zealanders over Auckland COVID-19 outbreak concerns

Australia's travel bubble with New Zealand has been suspended once again after three new cases of COVID-19 were detected in Auckland over the weekend.

The New Zealand city has gone into a three-day lockdown to ensure the outbreak does not worsen.

According to a statement from the Department of Health, Australia's chief medical officer Professor Paul Kelly convened an urgent late-night meeting yesterday to discuss Auckland's lockdown.

"It was decided at this meeting today that all flights originating in New Zealand will be classified as Red Zone flights for an initial period of 72 hours from 12.01am on 15 February," the Department of Health said.

"As a result of this, all people arriving on such flights originating within this three-day period will need to go into 14 days of supervised hotel quarantine."

The Federal Government will leave individual states and territories to decide how to manage people who have already arrive in Australia from New Zealand and who may pose a risk of transmitting COVID-19.

Meanwhile in Australia, Victorians are in the middle of a five-day "circuit-breaker" lockdown to slow the spread of a highly transmissible variant of COVID-19 in Melbourne.

The state's Health Department announced this morning there is one new locally acquired case of COVID-19, and one new case in hotel quarantine.

Yesterday, there were two new locally acquired cases of COVID-19 in Victoria, and one new locally acquired case on Saturday.

Updated at 9.57am AEDT on 15 February 2021.

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