Isolation at home for Ardern

MIKE HOULAHAN

PRIME Minister Jacinda Ardern, who attended the Labour Party’s southern regional conference in Arrowtown on Saturday, yesterday went into Covid19 isolation after partner Clarke Gayford tested positive.

Several members of the Labour caucus have had the pandemic disease but Ms Ardern has so far avoided contracting Covid, despite her extensive public schedule.

She revealed Mr Gayford’s positive test on social media yesterday, saying they had seven days of family time ahead of them.

Parliament is in session this week: standing orders were recently changed to allow MPs to attend remotely and Ms Ardern said she expected to ‘‘attend’’ question time and fulfil her other duties.

The deaths of a further 15 people who had Covid19, including one southerner, were confirmed over the weekend.

Otago and Southland maintained the region’s position of having the thirdhighest number of Covid19 cases during the weekend.

On Saturday, 690 new cases were announced, followed by a further 523 yesterday.

There were 17 people in southern hospitals with Covid19 yesterday.

Nationally, a total of 12,392 new Covid19 cases were diagnosed over the weekend.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health announced yesterday that a new variant of the Omicron strain of Covid19, BA.5, had been detected in the country for the first time.

The variant, which has been detected in Africa, Europe and Australia, was found in a recent arrival from South Africa.

Vaccination was expected to provide protection against BA.5 infection, a ministry spokesman said.