Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says genome sequencing shows the community Covid-19 case is the delta strain and originated in Australia. The Government is urgently pulling down flight manifests from Australia to see if Covid-19 could have breached New Zealand’s defences through the trans-Tasman bubble in late-July. These cases were being genomically sequenced to see if they could be linked directly to the community outbreak. No flights from New South Wales were allowed in without going into managed isolation, but travellers from other states could come in with a negative pre-departure test. While travel from New South Wales was barred, people could have been in New South Wales and simply lied to authorities.

Source: Stuff August 18, 2021 05:26 UTC