The Pacific country fears the virus is now circulating there, despite a vaccination rate over 99%.
The Cook Islands is bracing for its first coronavirus cases after a visitor to the country tested positive.
While one 10-year-old boy tested positive for the virus in December, authorities later said he was not infectious, and likely had tested positive only becausePrime Minister Brown said the infected traveller spent eight days in the Cook Islands and then tested positive for the Omicron variant on returning to New Zealand last week.the visitor first developed symptoms on the day they left Rarotonga, the largest of the country's islands.
But Mr Brown warned about "silent transmission" in his statement, where the country's "high vaccination rate is so protective that people get Covid, but so mildly that they do not realise they have it."