3 New Cases Of COVID-19

There are three new cases of COVID-19 to report in New Zealand today.

There are two new cases at the border and one linked to the Auckland case D - who is already in quarantine.

One person who tested positive today arrived from the UK on 10 November via Qatar and Australia. The individual tested positive at routine testing around day 3 in Hamilton and is now being transferred to the Auckland quarantine facility.

The second case arrived from Dubai on 10 November and was also detected on testing around day 3. This person has now been transferred to the Auckland quarantine facility.

We are also today confirming a positive test result in a close contact who is already in Auckland’s quarantine facility and which was reported yesterday as under investigation.

As reported yesterday this individual’s initial test result was negative and their subsequent test yesterday returned a weak positive result. A third test taken yesterday is now confirmed as positive. These test results indicate that this new case is a very recent infection.

This individual is a close contact of Case D and has been in the Auckland quarantine facility since 12th November.

Auckland Regional Public Health have identified seven close contacts and three casual contacts. All have been contacted and testing arranged.

Testing for all ten contacts is expected to be completed by the end of the day.

There are no places of interest identified to date for this latest case.

Testing

Yesterday the increased demand for community testing across Auckland’s testing network continued.

A full list of testing sites in Auckland is available on the Auckland Regional Public Health Service website.

Anyone in the Auckland area, and indeed throughout New Zealand, who has cold or flu symptoms should get a test and stay at home until they receive a negative test result.

In addition to the testing advice provided yesterday which remains current, we are now asking that if people were in Auckland CBD at locations of interest, they get a test regardless of symptoms. These locations are listed on the ARPHS website here: https://www.arphs.health.nz/news/auckland-restaurants-and-department-low-risk-from-new-community-case/

This is an enhanced surveillance tactic to ensure we are not missing any cases who may be asymptomatic. The list of locations can change as more information becomes available.

Numbers

The total number of active cases is 58.

Our total number of confirmed cases is now 1,645.

Yesterday our laboratories completed 10,525 tests for COVID-19, bringing our total number of tests completed to date to 1,179,587.

This is the highest number of tests in one day at a weekend since Sunday 16 August.

Nearly 70% of the testing done yesterday was in the Auckland region, with another 10% in the Wellington region.

NZ COVID Tracer

There are now 2,362,500 registered users of the NZ COVID Tracer app.

Poster scans have reached 115,673,661 and there have been 4,805,696 manual diary entries.

Over 1.1 million scans took place yesterday, the most since 26 September. Yesterday there were more than 500,000 people scanning codes which is also the highest number since 26 September.

It is encouraging to see that many New Zealanders are responding to the call to get back into the habit of scanning the QR codes.

The Ministry continues to encourage everyone to scan the QR codes wherever they see them, as the more we all scan, the safer we’ll all be.

The faster we can contact trace, the quicker we can get ahead of the virus and prevent spread in the community.

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