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New Zealand's three new community Covid cases have identified as the UK variant of the virus and they have not been linked to any managed isolation or quarantine case, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said today.
But she said it was too soon to say whether Auckland would come out of level-3 lockdown - or New Zealand out of alert level 2 - as early as Wednesday night.
Auckland moved to level 3 for at least three days at 11.59 last night, with employees asked to work from home, students urged to stay away from school and police setting up checkpoints at eight locations at the region's border overnight.
Officers are checking all vehicles arriving and leaving Auckland to ensure there is no non-essential travel. Alert level 2 is less restrictive. (The full list of rules are detailed below).
Ardern told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking today that the link to the British variant had led officials to think the virus might have come through airport transit or it had stemmed from an international airline crew member.
There are three new Auckland community cases - a mother, father and daughter from Papatoetoe. The mother works at LSG Sky Chefs, where she handles laundry from international flights.
"We do still have people who transit through New Zealand and fly on to other destinations. They stay airside but of course, it means they are using the things that go through the laundry at this individual's place of work," Ardern told Newstalk ZB.
"The other possibility is that it's international airline crew... they also do the laundry of a couple of international airline crew. And so, that is also one of the possibilities."
It was still possible - but unlikely - the new cases had come from an MIQ case which hadn't been sequenced, said Ardern.
She told MediaWorks that the "worst-case scenario" was that the outbreak was linked to a case which had come through MIQ three or four weeks ago. That would imply a long chain of transmission - the genomic testing results this morning ruled that out.
She told Newstalk ZB that the news of the UK variant didn't necessarily mean Auckland would spend longer in level 3.
Health officials were looking into cases in Australia to see if there was a link there and she told RNZ that officials would also be contacting international airlines to check their crews' infections to try to trace the source.
Ardern said the most likely scenario was always human to human but it was important to rule out as many avenues as possible - even if they never found the source.
The key to the decision whether to shift alert levels would be whether it appeared there would be limited community spread. She said Cabinet opted for the three-day lockdown in a "very genuine way".
Ardern told Newstalk ZB that officials would look to ramp up testing up today. As soon as negatives started coming through they could start to have some confidence the virus had been contained.
She said sewage testing in south Auckland on February 10 had not shown up any Covid in wastewater, "so that gives us another bit of a layer" in a decision.
Ardern said she didn't think the latest cases were another failure to test border workers. Even if the woman was tested on February 1 as part of her fortnightly cycle - she was instead tested on February 5 after taking annual leave - her case might not have been picked up. The testing ran hand in hand with education programmes and the key was getting tested as soon as they were symptomatic.
It was "too soon to make a judgement" either way about what decision would come Wednesday but it was the right decision to lockdown Auckland because it was confirmed the family had the UK variant, said Ardern.
Police set up road-blocks
Meanwhile, police have already set up road-blocks at eight locations on Auckland's border and are checking vehicles coming into and leaving the region this morning.
Cars on the Southern Motorway were bumper-to-bumper in some spots last night as many residents looked to flee the lockdown.
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