The Ministry of Health has revealed six new cases of Covid-19, including four in the community.
There is no live press conference today, with the ministry instead issuing a press statement with the latest numbers.
All four new cases in the community are linked to the Mt Roskill Evangelical Fellowship Church group within the Auckland August cluster.
Auckland Regional Public Health was actively tracing and testing their contacts.
The two cases in managed isolation both arrived to New Zealand from the Phillippines on the same flight on September 3 and tested positive in their day three tests.
One is a man in his 20s and the other is a female in her teens.
Today there are four people in hospital with Covid-19 – two are stable and in isolation on wards - one in Middlemore and one in North Shore hospitals. Two are in ICU, at North Shore and Waikato hospitals. That is one more person in ICU than yesterday.
Since August 11, the Ministry's contact tracing team had identified 3274 close contacts of cases, of which 3228 had been contacted and were self-isolating.
It was inin the process of contacting the rest.
There are 69 people linked to the community cluster who remained in the Auckland quarantine facility, which included 52 people who had tested positive for Covid-19 and their household contacts.
With today’s six new cases and one additional recovered case, our total number of active cases is 123. Of those, 43 are imported cases in MIQ facilities, and 80 are community cases.
The total number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 is now 1431, which is the number we report to the World Health Organization.
Yesterday laboratories processed 4525 tests for Covid-19, bringing the total number of tests completed to date to 823154.
Four cases yesterday
There were four new cases of Covid-19 confirmed yesterday – two were in the community and two were in managed isolation.
Both the community cases were linked to the Auckland August cluster - one was a close contact of an existing confirmed case that has been epidemiologically linked to the cluster.
The second was a household contact of a confirmed case linked to the Mt Roskill Evangelical Church sub-cluster. Both were already in isolation.
New rules for testing certain higher-risk workers at the border and in managed isolation and quarantine facilities came into force, including:
• 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.
Yesterday New Zealand labs processed 3,991 tests for Covid-19, bringing the total number of tests completed to date to 818,629 since the pandemic began.
