New Zealand recorded its highest single-day tally of new Chinese coronavirus cases on Tuesday, a development that seemed to cast doubt on the efficacy of the nation’s strict pandemic measures, including far-left New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s decision to force the entire country into lockdown over a single case of the disease in August 2021.

“Authorities reported 23,894 new COVID [Chinese coronavirus] cases in New Zealand on Tuesday, with 9,881 of those in Auckland, the country’s largest city,” the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported.

“It was an increase from daily cases reported from Saturday to Monday, which were below 20,000,” ABC noted.

Aukland’s high share of coronavirus cases on March 7 is significant, as Ardern chose to lock down all of New Zealand on August 17, 2021, after health officials detected a single new case of the Chinese coronavirus in Aukland days earlier. The city’s lone coronavirus case at the time was New Zealand’s first such infection in six months. The discovery prompted an extreme response by Ardern, who ordered the entire nation of New Zealand to adhere to a “level 4” alert system for the Chinese coronavirus, which is the highest level available. All of New Zealand’s schools, businesses, and offices shut down in accordance with the public health measure for three consecutive days, while Aukland and the nearby town of Coromandel observed a stricter lockdown for seven straight days.

Ardern’s administration later extended Aukland’s lockdown repeatedly, causing the city of 1.7 million residents to observe stay-at-home orders for a total period of 107 days. New Zealand’s federal government finally lifted Aukland’s lockdown on December 3, 2021, though only for people who had received a full series of a Chinese coronavirus vaccine.

Ardern’s choice to severely restrict the freedoms of New Zealand’s 4.8 million residents in August 2021 was not her first. She previously imposed a month-long, nationwide lockdown on New Zealand from about March 25 to April 28, 2020, shortly after the Chinese coronavirus pandemic first began.

New Zealand’s federal government announced sweeping Chinese coronavirus vaccine mandates in October 2021 that applied to over 40 percent of all workers in the country. Affected sectors spanned the health care, education, and service industries. New Zealand’s vaccine mandates cost 1,309 healthcare workers their jobs in November 2021, after they either failed to receive a required inoculation before a given deadline or simply chose not to participate in the forced vaccination scheme.

“As of 9am on Wednesday, 1309 staff had been stood down because they did not receive their first Covid-19 [Chinese coronavirus] vaccination by the first dose deadline of 11.59pm on Monday,” New Zealand’s Stuff news site reported on November 17, 2021.

“Of those stood down, 463 are nurses and at least 67 are midwives,” Stuff revealed, citing government data.