Two-thirds of the 343 sentinel tests taken at a pop-up testing site in Queenstown yesterday have been processed and of those none have come back positive for Covid-19, the Southern District Health Board says.
Director of Public Health Caroline McElnay gave an update on the outbreak in New Zealand at a press conference today, which was further updated by the Southern DHB this evening.
The total number of confirmed and probable cases of the virus in New Zealand is now at 1409. There were 8 new cases in the last 24 hours, two confirmed and 6 probable.
There was one new confirmed or probable case in the Southern District Health Board area. This brings the total number of cases in the district to 214.
There are 67 active cases in the South and 147 people have recovered, the MoH said.
Although the Southern district has the highest total number of confirmed and probable cases, it has the third-highest number of active cases behind Waikato (102 active cases) and Waitemata (98 active cases).
Yesterday, 4241 tests were processed nationally.
Teams in Queenstown, Waikato and Canterbury were doing targeted testing to get more information about community transmission.
Half of yesterday's 343 tests from the supermarket in Queenstown have been processed and to date they were all negative for the virus, McElnay said.
Shoppers and staff at the supermarket were swabbed for sentinel testing to examine whether there has been community transmission in the resort.
Meanwhile, an Invercargill man who died at his home this week had links to the Covid-19 Bluff wedding cluster. McElnay said the Ministry of Health was still investigating whether the man had died from Covid-19.
She understood the post-mortem had been completed and said they were awaiting the results.
There are 16 clusters in New Zealand and no new ones were announced today.
The MoH said today there were four new cases of the virus which were connected to the Bluff wedding cluster. It remains the largest cluster in the country with 96 cases.
There are 14 people in hospital in New Zealand and of those three are in intensive care. One person remains in a critical condition in Dunedin Hospital.
- additional reporting NZ Herald
