29 New Cases Of COVID-19

Today there are 29 new cases of COVID-19 to report - made up of 23 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 6 new probable cases. There are no additional deaths to report.

There are now 317 reported cases of COVID-19 which we can confirm have recovered – an increase of 35 on yesterday.

We now report more people recovered than new combined cases.

The combined total of confirmed and probable cases in New Zealand is 1239.

Today there are 14 people in hospital. That includes four in ICU – one each in Wellington, Waitemata, Counties Manukau and Southern DHBs. Two of these ICU patients in Southern and Waitemata are in a critical condition.

For those cases we have information on, we are still seeing a strong but declining link to overseas travel (41%), and growing links to confirmed cases within New Zealand (44%) including those in clusters we already know about and community transmission (2%). We are still investigating 13% of cases.

There are still 12 significant clusters. Our three largest clusters remain the same: Matamata (64, up 2 on yesterday); Bluff (87 up 6); and Marist College (84, no change).

Testing

There were 3990 tests processed yesterday bringing the total number of cases carried out to date to 51,165.

Our 7 day rolling average of tests is at 3,547 per day.

Our test capacity continues to increase and we have supplies in stock for nearly 47,000 tests. We expect to have between 50,000 to 60,000 complete tests in stock by the end of the week.

Clusters

We take a particular interest in clusters that occur in a place, at an event, workplace or school. Any cluster has the potential for rapid spread.

Our intention for any cluster is to ringfence it and stop any spread.

Fortunately, we know that our current clusters are well contained within the lock-down.

The increase in reported cases linked to clusters we are seeing now is due to the spread of COVID-19 within bubbles.

We're working to streamline information flows about clusters between ourselves, DHBs and ESRs including information around transmission routes, level of containment, timing of new cases, and proportion of close contacts traced.

To provide reassurance around the Ministry’s contact tracing programme the programme is being audited by Otago University infectious diseases specialist Dr Ayesha Verrall.

Dr Verrall is currently conducting a site visit of the programme today. Dr Verrall will in coming days be providing a report assessing the robustness of our programme and recommendations for improvement.

A reminder too that people should continue to access health care services when they need them. This especially applies to people that need urgent attention.

Please follow the usual mechanisms for help – contact your GP or call for an ambulance in an emergency.

Health services continue to have capacity to provide treatment. Healthline's normal line is 0800 611 116

Please don't leave it to long to seek help. If you need medical attention for any health concern please seek help promptly.

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