New Zealand

COVID-19 restrictions are being relaxed in New Zealand as infection rates fall. In a four-tiered alert system, all but the nation’s biggest city, Auckland, will move to the lowest disease-control level, alert level one on Tuesday. Auckland will move to alert level two on Wednesday.

Officials in New Zealand say they have now identified 13 new cases of COVID-19 in Auckland, the nation’s largest city, all directly related to the four cases from the same household reported Tuesday.

New Zealand is again under lockdown restrictions Wednesday after four COVID-19 infections were detected in Auckland, the South Pacific’s country’s biggest city. They are the first confirmed cases of community transmission of coronavirus in more than 100 days.

The decline in tourism stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic could have a profound effect on New Zealand’s Queenstown Lakes District, its mayor warned.

New Zealand’s Dunedin Railways Limited is mothballing its track and equipment as the COVID-19 pandemic compounds “the company’s existing financial challenges,” officials said.