The New Zealand government is fighting to stamp out its first COVID outbreak after no new cases were recorded for the past six months.
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The high-stakes effort to halt the virus outbreak came as a travellers returning from Sydney turned out to be a carrier of the delta variant. Then, 350 known cases were reported, straining New Zealand's contact-tracing system as workers try to track down 30,000 other people who might have been exposed.
New Zealand has a large diaspora of Pacific Islanders. Recently, an outbreak at a Samoan church event had hundreds of them infected. That also led to some racist attacks on social media.
In the past six months, New Zealanders enjoyed a period during which they didn't need to wear masks in public, and children attended school as usual.
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