The current boundary around Auckland will continue - even when the city moves to alert level 2, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has revealed.
Auckland is at the centre of the Covid-19 Delta outbreak and has only recently moved down to alert level 3 from alert level 4 lockdown.
Ardern and Director-general of health Ashley Bloomfield were giving an update this afternoon on case numbers.
The Prime Minister said there was broad control of the outbreak, and "control is key".
"We simply do not have enough people vaccinated in Auckland or in New Zealand to tolerate a widespread outbreak but maintaining control is not a given," Ardern said.
"We still need the restrictions that were using, I know they're incredibly hard and they will ease but for now they're doing a job for us that's why we need people to keep following them."
She said consideration was still being given to whether Auckland's alert level would change, and that decision would be made by Cabinet on Monday.
However, she said she wanted to provide some certainty that the boundary restrictions would remain in place, even if that happened.
Ardern said one of the clusters was in west Auckland, which was why all Auckland was locked down.
Ōtara has been removed from Auckland suburbs of interest - but Henderson and Papakura have been added, and Ardern urged people to get tested if they had even mild symptoms.
"We need everyone to be double vaccinated. Only three percent of people in this outbreak were double-vaccinated."
She said achieving 90 percent was possible: 92 percent of over-65s had had at least one jab.
"It is possible to hit 90, and we need everybody to put that effort in."
Vaccinations were available at more than 1400 places, and help was on hand to get to those centres.
Ardern said the focus on the transitional housing places affected by Covid cases were initially on testing, and then vaccinating programmes would be done.
Health workers were discussing the vaccinations rollout with those people.
Ardern said only 3 percent of cases in this outbreak were fully vaccinated, with 83 percent of eligible Aucklanders now having received the first dose of the vaccine.
About 80 percent of the eligible population nationwide has either had its first dose or has booked in for the first dose.
Nationally, 92 percent of our over 65s have had their first Covid vaccine and nearly 90 percent have either had or are booked in to have this second.
"It is possible to hit 90 and we need everyone to put that effort in," Ardern said. "We can be world-leading in getting our population vaccinated."
19 new community cases
There are new 18 community cases of Covid to report today in Auckland and one in upper Hauraki in Waikato.
There are also three new cases at the border and three historical cases. Eighteen people are in hospital, four in ICU or a high dependency unit.
Bloomfield said the upper Hauraki case is a child who attends Mangatangi School, and they have been isolating.
A managed and isolation quarantine worker is also among today's cases. They are from the Naumi hotel and the case is being investigated to determine if it is linked to the community outbreak.
The worker's positive test was picked up during routine testing and they had been vaccinated, Bloomfield said.
Of today's 19 cases, 16 are known contacts of other people.
Bloomfield said they were expecting another 30 cases in the coming days, as 19 of the newer cases were linked to emergency or transitional housing.
He urged people from all suburbs of interest to get tested - regardless of whether they were symptomatic or not. Nationwide, anyone with symptoms should get tested.
Bloomfield said a new study on long Covid-19 had shown nearly one in three people would experience at least one long-Covid symptom - usually breathing problems, abdominal pain, anxiety or depression.
There were 45 new cases in the Auckland outbreak on Wednesday, ending a string of days of lower numbers - a result epidemiologist Prof Rod Jackson described as a "wake-up call".
"Auckland is not getting out of level 3 until we don't have mystery cases," he said.
Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins this morning indicated today's numbers were expected to be lower - but also pointed the finger at people breaking the alert level 3 rules for spreading the virus.
- NZ Herald and RNZ
