Director general of health Ashley Bloomfield has revealed there are five new cases of Covid-19 in the community and one in managed isolation.
There are 125 people linked to the cluster who have been moved into the Auckland quarantine facility, including those cases and household contacts.
There have been 1299 confirmed cases in New Zealand.
There are five people receiving hospital-level care, one in Auckland City Hospital and four in Middlemore.
Bloomfield said there were 23,038 tests were processed yesterday.
Since August 11, there have been 1983 close contacts identified, of which 1861 have been contacted.
He said the Glen Innes Pak N Save was only visited once by a confirmed case on August 12, and Bloomfield apologised for giving different information yesterday.
Results 'encouraging'
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said today's results were a good sign.
"Today's results are encouraging, at this stage we are not seeing a surge in community cases, we have not seen any new cases outside of that identified Auckland cluster.
"And there are no additional cases relating to the Rydges maintenance worker that we talked about yesterday."
There were no more cases related to the Rydges infection announced yesterday.
The cases were not doubling each day over the past week, and the resurgence plan was working as intended so far, Ardern said.
She said Cabinet's testing strategy from late June had not been executed as expected, and she outlined three new measures.
'No system is foolproof'
A small team will be set up to support the Health Ministry, co-chaired by Heather Simpson and Sir Brian Roche, will help the ministry with the testing strategy.
"We are implementing here a strategy that cuts across multiple government agencies. Health is deeply embedded in the roll out and we do need to support them."
She said Roche was working alongside Auckland's public health unit, and he will report to Bloomfield on progress.
She said 500 more Defence Force personnel would be deployed to managed isolation facilities, bringing the total to 1200 Defence Force staff. This boost will be rolled out over the next six weeks, and staff at each facility will be 19 per facility.
That will bring the total Defence Force personnel supporting the Covid-19 response to around 1200 – the largest military contingent since Timor-Leste.
The Government will be moving to a model of direct employment of security guards with the appropriate training, Ardern said
Staff will also be at the maritime border to assist Customs, she said.
"This will raise accountability and will give more central control over procedures."
She said these measures would help limit the risk of further spread.
"No system is foolproof and in a global pandemic, there are no absolutes."
Some 40,000 Kiwis had returned from overseas, and it was "unrealistic" to have a perfect border system, she said.
"I don't think we should leave it to [the Health Minsitry] alone," Ardern said.
It wasn't a sign that the strategy wasn't properly resourced, but rather that it was a complex operation, she said.
Bloomfield welcomed the extra Defence Force staff and didn't see it as a vote of no confidence.
He said he would have liked the testing strategy of border-facing workers to have been rolled out at a faster rate, a sentiment Ardern and Health Minister Chris Hipkins have previously expressed.
He had not asked why his ministry had told Hipkins that there was weekly testing at the Jet Park Hotel several weeks ago when that wasn't happening.
He had been focusing on the response to the outbreak but would look into why that had happened in due course.
Ardern said there was "no intention to move to level 4, and no need to" based on test results so far.
Breakdown of 1200 Defence Force personnel:
• 990 at Managed Isolation Facilities
• 80 at Border
• 70 in Police Traffic Management
• 100 for electoral support.
It comes as the tourist attraction Hobbiton reveals a visitor tested positive for Covid-19.
Yesterday a case emerged that was unconnected to the South Auckland community cluster, which appears to have started at the Mt Wellington Americold workplace on July 31.
The new case was a maintenance worker at Rydges Hotel who tested positive on Sunday during mandatory testing of all workers at managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities.
Genomic sequencing traced his case to a woman who flew back from the USA and stayed at the Rydges until she tested positive for Covid-19 on July 31.
But neither swipe card data or CCTV footage revealed whether they had interacted at the hotel, raising the possibility that he caught Covid-19 from an infected surface that she had touched, or she had infected someone else who infected him.
His case appeared to be contained, with all testing so far on close contacts in his household or workplace coming back negative.
The Auckland cluster stood at 58 confirmed cases yesterday, but the Government is expecting is to grow to the largest cluster New Zealand has had so far.
The current alert level settings - level 3 for Auckland and level 2 for the rest of the country - are in place until 11.59pm on August 26, but Cabinet will review the settings on Friday.
Health Minister Chris Hipkins said this morning that there was no need to move Auckland to level 4, based on the test results so far.
