New Zealand wages high-stakes effort to halt virus outbreak

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — By early next week, New Zealanders should know if their government's strict new lockdown is working to stamp out its first coronavirus outbreak in six months.

A successful effort could again make the nation's virus response the envy of the world. A failure could expose flaws in its health system, including a shortage of hospital beds and a slow vaccine rollout.

The high-stakes campaign hinges on whether new infections, which have risen for the past 10 days, begin to drop.

Last week, the government put the nation into the full lockdown after only a single community case was detected in the city of Auckland..

“It’s counterintuitive,” said epidemiologist Michael Baker. “When there’s a threat, you usually increase the response as it gets more dangerous. Here, we’re doing the opposite, with the maximum response when the threat is tiny.”

It's a strategy that has worked incredibly well for New Zealand but faces its biggest test against a tougher enemy: the highly contagious delta variant of the virus. Baker, a professor at the University of Otago, said the strategy was the best approach and he was optimistic it would succeed again.

Since the pandemic began, New Zealand has reported only 26 deaths from the virus in a population of 5 million. The death rate per capita in Britain and the U.S. is about 400 times higher. Remarkably, life expectancy for New Zealanders actually rose in 2020 as virus measures helped reduce other seasonal ailments like the flu.

The U.S. is in the grip of a wave of infection powered by the delta variant, which has sent cases, deaths and hospitalizations soaring again, wiping out months of progress.

New Zealanders lived virus-free in the six months leading up to the latest outbreak, going to workplaces, stores and sports...