Director of Public Health Dr Caroline McElnay said said 20 of the cases were household contacts, 12 were known contacts, and 12 remained unlinked with investigations continuing to determine how they were linked to the current outbreak.
"We acknowledge today's numbers are higher than recent days. This is not unexpected because there have been a number of contacts of new cases and we can expect to get fluctuations from day to day."
Twenty-five people were in hospital, with five in ICU or HDU. Those in hospital are at: North Shore (2), Middlemore (12), Auckland (10) and Waikato Base Hospital (1).
There had been three cases identified at the border.
There were 82,303 vaccine doses administered yesterday, including 62,598 second doses, which was a daily record.
There had been two possible exposure events at Middlemore Hospital, both from the same patient, McElnay said.
The patient returned to the emergency department on Thursday, October 7, and was then isolated, tested and moved to a negative pressure room. They subsequently returned a positive result.
As of this morning, 42 patients and 18 visitors have been identified as contacts.
No staff are required to stand down as they were wearing the appropriate PPE. There have been a number of exposure events at Middlemore given there are a number of subclusters in the area
On Monday he patient presented to the emergency department for a non-Covid related issue where they stayed until they were assessed and discharged. They answered no to all screening questions and were asymptomatic.
Update on Auckland case who travelled to Northland
There were no Northland cases despite officials confirming a person in the area had tested positive for Covid, after initially returning a "weak positive" test result.
The case reported last night, who recently travelled to Northland, had been transferred to an Auckland quarantine facility, under strict infection prevention and control procedures, including the use of full PPE.
The case was under investigation after returning a weak positive result from a test in Whangarei earlier this week and yesterday returned a positive test result in Auckland.
Public health staff were continuing investigations to identify whether there were any locations of interest or exposure events associated with the case.
In some instances, a location of interest may not be listed on the Ministry's website.
"This doesn’t mean no actions have been taken around tracing the movements of a case.
"The focus of publishing locations of interest is on locations where contact tracers don’t have a good idea of who was there at the relevant time, like bars and supermarkets."
People being turned away from Auckland Airport
The Ministry said it had heard reports people were being turned away from Auckland Airport due to not having a test result or their result being too old.
"People leaving Auckland for personal reasons are reminded they must have acceptable evidence of a permitted reason to cross the alert level boundary and have evidence of a negative test within the last 72 hours."
New Waikato cases linked
The Ministry said the three new cases in Waikato were all linked and contacts of existing cases. Interviews were continuing to determine any further contacts or locations of interest.
There continued to be a strong response to calls for testing in Waikato with 5,180 swabs taken yesterday. There were seven pop up testing sites operating today at Claudelands, Te Rapa, Karapiro, Raglan, Huntly, Kawhia and Tokoroa, with extended hours to cater for demand.
The existing testing centre was at Founders Theatre is also open.
- ODT and NZ Herald
