New Zealand records 13 new cases as restrictions clamp down

Cars queue at a Covid-19 test center in Auckland, New Zealand, on August 13. Dean Purcel/AP

New Zealand has recorded 13 new cases of coronavirus in the past day, health officials said Sunday, as the country maintains new restrictions amid a sudden Covid-19 outbreak.

Of the new cases, 12 were in the Auckland community, with none having traveled outside the region recently. All had close links to the existing outbreak; two of the new cases belonged to the same household as a previously confirmed patient.

The remaining case is a child in managed isolation who arrived in early August from Afghanistan.

New Zealand has recorded 1,271 confirmed cases since the pandemic began, said health authorities. It currently has 61 active cases, of which 49 were locally transmitted and 20 were imported from abroad.

Auckland under lockdown: On Friday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that Auckland -- the city of around 1.5 million people at the center of the new outbreak -- will remain under a level three lockdown for another 12 days, while the rest of the country stays under level two restrictions, meaning gatherings are limited to no more than 100 people.

The rules extend restrictions that came into effect earlier this week.

Just five days before then, New Zealand was marking an enviable milestone -- 100 days without any community transmission. But this week demonstrated how fast that can change, even in a country that been held up as a world leader for its handling of the virus.

Mexico’s Health Ministry has reported 6,345 new cases of Covid-19 on Saturday, bringing the country's total to 517,714 confirmed cases.

The ministry reported 635 new deaths, bringing the country's death toll to 56,543. 

On Thursday, Mexico’s government signed an agreement with biotech firm AstraZeneca to produce a Covid-19 vaccine in Mexico to be exported to Latin America and the Caribbean in 2021.

Production for a Covid-19 vaccine could begin in 2021, Sylvia Varela, chief executive of AstraZeneca Mexico, said Thursday at a press conference in Mexico City.

Leaders at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were blindsided this week when President Donald Trump announced that the agency could deploy teams to assist schools with safely reopening in the fall, a senior CDC official told CNN, the latest example of a breakdown in communication between the agency and the White House.

The announcement left CDC officials scrambling this week to train staff to be able to deploy if they are called upon, the senior official said. 

The surprise statement by Trump was reminiscent of early on in the pandemic when the CDC Task Force regularly learned about assignments during presidential briefings, finding out in real time along with the public, a senior official said.

The CDC official said the agency is expected to come up with a vaccine plan for schools in at least four states by October, even though there is no realistic expectation that a vaccine would be ready by then. 

Brazil has reported 41,576 new Covid-19 cases and 709 deaths in the past 24 hours, the country’s health ministry reported Saturday. 

The total number of confirmed coronavirus infections now stands at 3.3 million. At least 107,232 have died from coronavirus in the country, according to the ministry’s data.

São Paulo state reported 11,408 new cases and 167 new deaths on Saturday, down from 11,667 and 289 the day before.

São Paulo has been the state hardest hit by the coronavirus in Brazil, with 697,530 total confirmed cases and 26,780 confirmed deaths.