There were three new cases in managed isolation.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield will front a press conference at 4pm to announce any challenges to alert levels. New Zealand is currently in lockdown until 11.59pm tomorrow.
The Ministry said it its 1pm update all of the cases have or were being transferred safely to a managed isolation facility, under strict infection prevention and control procedures, including the use of full PPE.
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It said it was not unexpected to see a rise in daily case numbers at this stage. At its peak last year, New Zealand had a daily total of 89 new cases.
The total number of community cases in Auckland was now 99 and Wellington’s number of community cases had increased to eight.
Of the 107 cases in the cluster, 72 were already epidemiologically linked to other community cases identified in the outbreak.
Investigations were continuing to determine whether and how the remaining 35 cases are linked to the outbreak, however most have a plausible link on initial assessment.
For example, people were at a location of interest.
ESR also continued to run whole genome sequencing on cases. Yesterday 29 samples were sequenced and all were confirmed as being linked to the Auckland outbreak.
There are now more than 280 locations of interest listed. The vast majority of these are in Auckland. There are 11 in Wellington and a few scattered across the North Island, as well as two flights between Auckland and Wellington.
So far 13,230 contacts have been identified with less than half - 6773 - contacted by public health staff and self isolating.
The majority of the 13,230 contacts are close contacts and the number is expected to rise throughout the day as records are fully processed.
Public health staff are now reaching out to the remaining 6,457 contacts who are yet to be reached.
How did Delta get here?
The Ministry of Health is still investigating how Covid was transferred from the New South Wales returnee at the Crowne Plaza into the community and is focusing on an open walkway while the case was in the lobby.
Of the six people who walked through the walkway while the index case was in the lobby, four have been identified. Three have tested negative and one person is in the process of getting a test. Police are helping to identify the remaining two people.
The index case has been genomically linked to three other positive cases who were in a family bubble staying in the room next door at the MIQ facility in central Auckland.
As a result of the link between those cases, officials quickly put in place post-departure day five testing for returnees who were in the Crowne Plaza, and who were on the same floor and whose stay over-lapped with the infectious period of that original case.
But how might have the virus travelled from the hotel into the community?
"It could have been passed from one person to another in the facility who's then left, or during transport from the airport to the hotel," Te Pūnaha Matatini Covid-19 modeller Professor Michael Plank said.
"There are a number of possibilities."
Testing
Yesterday more than 17,000 Covid-19 tests were taken across Auckland - the biggest day at its community testing centres so far.
Some 11,000 were taken at community testing centres and around 6,000 at general practice and urgent care clinics.
There were also 35,766 tests processed across New Zealand.
There were 35,800 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine administered yesterday. This brings the total number of Kiwis with two doses to 1,007,801.
Vaccination rates
Yesterday, 35,800 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine were deliverednationally. This was made up of 26,835 first doses, and 8,965 second doses.
More than 2.78 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine have been administered to date (to 11.59pm yesterday).
Of these, 1.77 million were first doses and more than one million are second doses.
More than 156,000 Mâori have received their first vaccination. Of these, more than 92,000 have also had their second vaccinations.
More than 103,000 doses have been administered to Pacific peoples. Of these, more than 63,000 have also received their second doses.
Number of cases could rise over next five days
Earlier New Zealand Herald reported the number of Covid-19 community cases was expected to surpass 100 with more than 30 new cases expected to be announced today.
Covid Response Minister Chris Hipkins said yesterday if he was in Auckland he would expect to remain in lockdown for longer as cases in the city continue to rise.
The caution around moving levels elsewhere was the tens of thousands of people who had left Auckland since the first community case was identified and the country moved into lockdown, Associate Health Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall told morning media.
The Government is warning that the number of cases may continue to rise in the next five days before the curve starts to fall later in the week.
Verrall told the AM Show it was possible there could be a high number of Covid cases today, compared with previous days.
Yesterday there were 21 new Delta cases in the community taking the total number to 72.
