There are six new cases of COVID-19 to report in New Zealand today.
Two are imported cases detected in MIQ facilities. One is a man in his 20s who arrived from the Philippines on September 3 and was at a managed isolation facility when he tested positive on day 3 of his stay.
The second case is a female in her late teens who arrived on the same flight from the Philippines and also tested positive on day 3.
There are four new cases in the community, all linked to the Mt Roskill Evangelical Fellowship Church group within the Auckland August cluster. Auckland Regional Public Health is actively tracing and testing their contacts.
Since August 11, our contact tracing team has identified 3,274 close contacts of cases, of which 3,228 have been contacted and are self-isolating, and we are in the process of contacting the rest.
There are 69 people linked to the community cluster who remain in the Auckland quarantine facility, which includes 52 people who have tested positive for COVID-19 and their household contacts.
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.
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.
Our total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 is now 1,431, which is the number we report to the World Health Organization.
Yesterday our laboratories processed 4,525 tests for COVID-19, bringing the total number of tests completed to date to 823,154.
The Ministry of Health acknowledges frontline workers who’re continuing to work hard to deliver important services for New Zealand.
At our ports, our borders and elsewhere, the nature of this work can mean staff will be required to undergo regular COVID-19 tests.
We want to thank these workers and their employers for their willingness to participate in a testing process that’s helping keep all New Zealanders safe from COVID-19.
NZ COVID Tracer app registrations continue to increase and there are now 2,150,000 registered users. There have been 362,256 posters created.
The app has recorded 45,494,859 poster scans, and 2,529,729 manual diary entries.
And a reminder that the NZ COVID Tracer booklet is now available to help people keep a written record of their movements if they can’t download the app. It can be downloaded from the COVID-19 website.