Four new Covid cases in NZ

Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield: "Tempting to have a chat to people. Please do, but...
Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield Photo: Getty Images

There are four new Covid cases in New Zealand today.

Two cases are in the community and two are in managed isolation, the Ministry of Health said in a statement.

The first community case is a close contact of an existing patient who has been epidemiologically linked to the cluster.

The second is a household contact of a confirmed case linked to the Mt Roskill 'mini cluster'.

The Auckland cluster now has 161 people linked to it.

With the four cases today, the total number of active cases is 118. Of those, 41 are imported cases in MIQ facilities, and 77 are community cases.

Of the two imported cases, the first is a boy under 4 and the second is a woman in her 20s.

Both arrived from India on August 23 and they are both a close contact of separate previously reported cases.

There have been a number of imported cases from that flight.

Four patients are in hospital today - one is in Waikato Hospital's ICU, the other three are stable.

The country's total number of confirmed cases is now 1425.

Today's statement confirmed that new rules for testing certain higher-risk workers at the border and in managed isolation and quarantine facilities are now in force.

These rules include:

• Workers at Managed Quarantine Facilities and workers who transport people required to be in quarantine to and from the facility will be tested once every seven days
• Workers at Managed Isolation Facilities and workers who transport people required to be in isolation to and from the facility will be tested once every 14 days
• Workers in certain higher-risk occupations at the Ports of Auckland and the Port of Tauranga will be tested once every 14 days
• Workers in certain higher-risk occupations at Auckland International Airport will be tested once every 14 days

Meanwhile, there are now 2,139,000 registered users of the Covid-19 tracer app - some 360,000 QR code posters have been created.

The app has recorded 43,433,462 poster scans, and 2,477,964 manual diary entries.

Since August 11, the ministry's contact tracing team has identified 3224 close contacts of cases, of which 3199 have been contacted and are self-isolating. The rest are in the process of being contacted.

The ministry processed just under 4000 Covid tests yesterday, bringing the total number of tests to 818,600.

The new cases brings the number of people linked to the community cluster who remain in the Auckland quarantine facility to 70.

That includes 52 people who have tested positive for Covid-19 and their household contacts.

There were five new cases of Covid-19 confirmed yesterday – four were in the community and one was in managed isolation.

All four were linked to the Auckland cluster and epidemiologically linked to the Mt Roskill Evangelical Church group.

Meanwhile, a Christchurch person who was on Saturday discussed as being under further investigation has now been confirmed as not a case of Covid-19.

The investigation has been closed, the ministry said.