Auckland Cluster

 A new cluster has popped up in Auckland this past week.† They have a few dozen positives, and about a hundred people in involuntary quarantine.

This is important for a few reasons. 

• New Zealand successfully eradicated COVID-19, and had not had a case in over 14 weeks.
• New Zealand is geographically isolated without COVID-19. Their response to the pandemic was to isolate themselves even further.
• Contact tracing has not yielded any solid leads about how the virus got to New Zealand this time.
  
• Initial genetic testing indicates that the strain is an older one, that is not that widespread around the globe. However, it still circulates in Australia and the UK, which have close relations with New Zealand. 
• The strain is not, and has not been present, in the United States.
• Lastly, the strain was not detected in New Zealand's initial outbreaks. 

They phylogeny on the strain is primitive at this point. Keep an eye on Nextstrain's dashboards for further developments. Disappointingly, they don't say too much about this strain yet.

So, we've got an isolated country that's buttoned down tight, and very aggressive about limiting contact ... and they still got an outbreak. Reddit has some speculation on what might have happened.

† Auckland is the largest city in New Zealand. It is a bit smaller than the Salt Lake City consolidated metro area (the "Wasatch Front" to locals).