Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield has confirmed New Zealand's seventh and eighth positive Covid-19 coronavirus cases, both with overseas links.
In a media briefing on Sunday afternoon, Bloomfield said the seventh case was a man in Wellington, who came from Australia and has tested positive. He arrived at 12.05am yesterday morning from Brisbane on Air NZ flight 828.
He was self-isolating with his partner and another family member, and was symptom-free. He does not need hospital treatment.
- People on the same flights as the seventh and eighth cases should contact Healthline - 0800 358 5453 - to see if they were in close contact with the positive cases.
Bloomfield said the man did not have symptoms when he arrived in New Zealand, but he had had symptoms, which was why he had tests in Australia.
He said he was surprised the seventh case took the flight in the first place, having been tested in Australia.
The eighth case was a woman travelling from Denmark via Doha on flight QR920, arriving on March 10.
She flew from Auckland to Christchurch on Jetstar JQ225, and she then travelled to Queenstown in a private rental car.
She was unwell upon arriving in Queenstown and was in hospital. She was recovering well and planning was under way for her discharge.
Asked if the eighth case had been freedom camping, Bloomfield said a detailed diary of the woman's movements was being taken and close contacts were being traced.
A campervan was an appropriate place for self-isolation, he said, though he was not aware if the woman's family was self-isolating in a campervan.
The fact that these two more confirmed cases had travelled from overseas reinforced the importance of the new travel restrictions announced yesterday for all people coming to New Zealand to self-isolate for 14 days, which begins at 1am on Monday, Bloomfield said.
Bloomfield said close contacts were being identified, and those identified were in self-isolation for 14 days.
All previous confirmed cases have now recovered or are recovering at home, he said.
PASSENGERS ISOLATED ON SHIP IN AKAROA
Three people have also been isolated on a cruise ship in Akaroa, and were being tested.
Two of them were in close contact with a previously confirmed case, one of whom had symptoms.
All on board are not allowed off the ship until those test results are known, he said.
Bloomfield said he would wait for the test results to come back. He noted that the new travel restrictions meant that no cruise ships can come to New Zealand until at least the end of June.
Some cruise ship passengers may have previously disembarked in Dunedin, but Bloomfield said the main concern was for people on the cruise ship.
However, he would not be drawn on what might happen until the test results came back.
IMPORTANT TO STAY HOME IF UNWELL
Bloomfield thanked the New Zealanders who had been through self-isolation in the last four to six weeks, and work is under way to "scale-up" the response as the number of those in self-isolation was expected to ramp up.
The only infections in New Zealand were within family members, he said.
Latest studies showed that people can be infectious in the early stages of getting Covid-19, he said, and the most common way of getting infected was being in repeated close contact with someone who had it.
That reinforced the importance of staying at home if you're feeling unwell, he said.
That would allow the health system to be able to cope with the number of cases as they came up, he said.
Bloomfield is giving the media conference in Christchurch alongside Canterbury DHB Chief Medical Officer Dr Sue Nightingale.
Nightingale said the DHB was looking at how to manage its staff, including vulnerable staff, as well as setting up community-based clinics, which should be ready by Wednesday.
She said testing capacity would also be ramped up, including two shifts of staff on from tomorrow so that testing could take place twice a day.
Contact tracing was essential to "flattening the curve" to keep people out of hospital as much as possible, she said, which would enable hospitals to better respond to acute health needs.
Bloomfield said Healthline had triple the number of calls as they did on the same day last year, and he asked callers to be patient. "Don't ring if it's just for general information."
He said self-isolation for positive cases and close contacts needed to be strict, but others returning to New Zealand from overseas didn't need to be.
Those people didn't have to stay in their rooms, but they shouldn't go to public places.
Close contact, he said, was now aligned to other countries to within two metres of a positive case for more than 15 minutes; previously it was within 1.5 metres.
He said there was lots of testing capacity in New Zealand, but people who were anxious but didn't have any symptoms would not be tested.
He added that social distancing didn't mean social isolation, which was more about physical distance. But people should be remain socially connected, and should check on each other, particularly the most vulnerable.
There was no temperature-screening for people who come into New Zealand because of the danger of false-positives, he said. There were announcements at the airport and other avenues for information.
If had people had symptoms, they could seek advice from a nurse at airports.
It wasn't "feasible" to ask every traveler arriving into New Zealand if they had been tested and whether they were awaiting test results, but it was not appropriate for the seventh case to fly to New Zealand, Bloomfield said.
He said he didn't want airline pilots to race to New Zealand to beat the midnight deadline for the travel restrictions. It was more important that people with symptoms seek advice.
