No New Cases Of COVID-19

Once again, there are no new cases of COVID-19 to report in New Zealand today.

Our total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 remains at 1,154, which is the number we report to the World Health Organization.

Our combined total of confirmed and probable cases remains at 1,504.

There is no change to the number of recovered cases which remain at 1,456. This represents 97% of all confirmed and probable cases.

There are no additional deaths to report.

There remains one person receiving hospital-level care for COVID-19; they are in Middlemore and are not in ICU.

Yesterday our laboratories completed 2,163 tests, bringing the total number of tests completed to date to 261,315.

NZ COVID Tracer app
The NZ COVID Tracer app has now recorded 380,000 registrations – that’s an increase of 17,000 since 5pm on Sunday.

We continue to encourage as many people as possible to download the app – it will help us identify, trace, test and isolate any cases of COVID-19.

The Ministry is also very supportive of the work done by businesses to get their unique QR codes up and running, with 13,600 posters having been created as of midday.

If people are having issues with the app, we want to know so we can get the problems fixed.

The Ministry website has lots of FAQs about the app, and you can report issues by freephone or email.

www.health.govt.nz/NZ-COVID-Tracer/QAAs

To reinforce on privacy:

· personal information and contact details provided through the app will only be used to get in touch if an individual is identified as a close contact of a COVID-19 case
· information about the locations individuals choose to record is stored securely on their phone and is not shared with contact tracers unless an individual chooses to do so.

In either case, the personal information shared with the Ministry is held for public health purposes only and will never be used for enforcement.

Quarantine and managed isolation facilities
The Director-General of Health visited Auckland quarantine and managed isolation facilities on Friday.

Dr Bloomfield met with about 300 of the people involved in providing accommodation for guests, including Ministry of Health staff, health workers and hotel workers.

“I want to acknowledge the hard work that’s being done by people from across central and local government and the staff employed at all the facilities,” says Dr Bloomfield.

“Protecting our border is a critical part of the Government's strategy to eliminate COVID-19, especially now that domestic cases are at such low levels.

“We don’t want to put the progress we have made in jeopardy and we know international arrivals continue to be a potential source of new cases.

“It was important to me to be satisfied that guests are being appropriately supported and that health requirements are being met.”

Background

Anyone arriving in New Zealand must spend at least 14 days in managed isolation or quarantine.

Over the weekend, we saw the 10,000th passenger enter managed isolation or quarantine in Auckland (this followed the arrival of a flight from Melbourne).

At any one time, more than 2,000 people are in the hotels being used for isolation or quarantine in Auckland.

So far around 8,000 people have completed their stay in Auckland or Christchurch and have returned home.

The majority of those people have provided positive feedback to the hotels, and in particular to the hundreds of staff working around the clock to support them.

ENDS

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