New Zealand counted record-high coronavirus cases Tuesday in a growing outbreak in its largest city of Auckland.
Health officials found 94 new local infections, eclipsing the 89 that were reported twice during the early days of the pandemic 18 months ago.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern urged vaccinations as a way out of Auckland's two-month lockdown.
She said lockdown rule-breakers were contributing to the spread of infections and noted that many of the new cases had been detected among younger people.
Most of the new cases were in Auckland, but seven were found in the nearby Waikato district.
New Zealand had eliminated earlier outbreaks by imposing a strict lockdown and by aggressively contact-tracing and isolating those who were infectious.
But the approach failed against the more transmissible delta variant. The government has since eased some of Auckland's lockdown rules, allowing more people to return to work.
Ardern has also embarked on an all-out effort to get people vaccinated. That's included a televised "Vaxathon" festival on Saturday which saw a record 130,000 people getting shots, more than 2% of the New Zealand's population of 5 million.
Ardern has promised to outline a path out of lockdown for Auckland based on vaccination numbers.
The government has previously stressed the importance of getting 90% of people aged 12 and over fully vaccinated, including a high proportion of Maori, who have been particularly hard hit by the outbreak.
But that goal remains some distance away, with 85% of eligible people having had at least one dose and 67% fully vaccinated. The numbers are lower among Maori.
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