The Ministry is confirming one new managed isolation related case in Christchurch in the community.
The case, reported to the Ministry on Monday afternoon, is a staff member working in a managed isolation facility in Christchurch where the international mariners are in managed isolation and quarantine.
Full details of the case, and the actions taken in response will be provided in the 1pm stand up on Tuesday.
The individual was tested as part of the routine testing for staff in the facility and returned a negative test on Thursday 29 October. On Saturday they developed symptoms and sought a further test on Sunday and a positive result was received today.
The person is now in isolation at home and reports taking care to isolate themselves as soon as they developed symptoms.
The first of the international mariners, due to complete their managed isolation on Tuesday morning, will have their managed isolation extended for at least 24 hours as an additional precautionary measure.
Those precautionary measures have included additional tests – up to four tests for some individuals - and an already lengthened stay in managed isolation.
4 new cases of COVID-19 in managed isolation; no new community cases
There are four new cases of COVID-19 to report from managed isolation in New Zealand today, and no new community cases.
Of the four cases we are reporting today:
Our total number of active cases is 81.
Our total number of confirmed cases is now 1607.
Yesterday our laboratories completed 3,046 tests for COVID-19, bringing the total number of tests completed to date to 1,104,113.
As outlined above, day 15 testing has been carried out on all group members who are not already confirmed cases. This has resulted in one additional positive case, who already being monitored as a known close contact.
We have now had a total of 31 positive cases connected to this group.
All those who meet our low risk indicators, which include those who have recovered or have returned consistently negative test results throughout their stay, will be eligible to leave managed isolation from tomorrow 3 November. We will only release individuals when these testing criteria have been met.
Some individuals in this group have now been tested as many as four times. We want to thank them for their commitment to New Zealand’s testing processes and for contributing to good health outcomes for them and their colleagues.
There are now 2,336,200 users registered on NZ COVID Tracer.
The app has recorded a total of 104,791,378 poster scans and users have created a total of 4,375,467 manual diary entries.