Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern sends Auckland back into lockdown level 3. Auckland will return to alert level three for seven days, with the rest of the country going to level two as mystery surrounds how a new community Covid-19 case became infected. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the change would happen at 6am on Sunday, when a police border would be re-established around Auckland. Speaking at a 9pm press conference on Saturday, Ardern said the lockdown was necessary due to there being no immediate transmission link between the new case and the latest Auckland cluster, and because of the number of places the case had visited while potentially infectious.