2 New Cases Of COVID-19

Today there are two new cases of COVID-19 to report in New Zealand.

One is an imported case detected in a managed isolation facility and the other is a community case – a female in her late teens who was already self-isolating. This person is a household contact, epidemiologically linked to the Auckland August cluster bereavement sub-group.

The imported case is a man in his 40s who returned from Russia on a flight via Turkey and Malaysia on 19 September. He returned a positive result to day 3 testing and is now at the quarantine facility in Auckland.

There are 35 people isolating in the Auckland quarantine facility from the community, which includes 15 people who have tested positive for COVID-19 and their household contacts.

Three people are in hospital with COVID-19 – one each at Auckland City, Middlemore and North Shore hospitals. All three patients are in isolation on a general ward.

Since August 11, our contact tracing team has identified 4,053 close contacts of cases, of which 4,050 have been contacted and are self-isolating or have completed self-isolation. We are in the process of contacting the rest.

Our total number of active cases is 60; of those, 29 are imported cases in MIQ facilities, and 31 are community cases.

Our total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 is 1,473.

Yesterday our laboratories processed 6,465 tests, bringing the total number of tests completed to date to 937,244.

An update on the three cases reported on 23 September
Public health services continue to contact trace, test and isolate close contacts of the three community cases reported this week.

As we have previously reported, these three people are part of the same family group – two had been in managed isolation in Christchurch and returned home on a chartered flight, while the third is a household contact.

There are now a total of 35 close contacts associated with these cases. Eight have returned negative test results and the remaining have been or are in the process of being tested. All are now self-isolating.

Public health services in the relevant regions have been in contact with businesses where individuals may have visited while infectious and will be issuing information to the public as appropriate.

The National Contact Tracing team will continue issuing exposure notices through the COVID Tracer App where appropriate.

Yesterday 15 ‘push’ notifications were issued via the app. This is significantly assisting contact tracing efforts.

Anyone receiving an app notification as having visited a place of interest should be vigilant of their health and get tested if they develop symptoms.

Additional testing
Three additional community testing centres have been stood up, 1 in Taupo and 2 in Rotorua. There continue to be numerous CTCs in other regions.

For more details about weekend testing and where to get a COVID-19 test in the locations from which the travellers came, visit these links:

· in Auckland, visit Auckland Regional Public Health Service’s website
· in Bay of Plenty, visit the DHB’s website
· in Waikato, visit the DHB’s website
· in Wellington, visit Capital & Coast DHB’s website
· in Christchurch, visit Canterbury DHB’s website.

Flight contacts
An update on the flight which carried the man who left MIQ in Christchurch and then tested positive in Auckland.

There were 86 people on that flight. 75 have returned negative results, 6 were previously reported positive cases that do not require further testing, 3 are recently reported positive cases, 1 is pending and 1 is under investigation.

NZ COVID Tracer
There are now 2,272,500 users registered on NZ COVID Tracer.

The app has recorded a total of 73,856,565 poster scans, and users have created 3,278,040 manual diary entries in NZ COVID Tracer.

Again, a reminder that with the move down alert levels this week, businesses are still required to display the official NZ COVID Tracer QR codes across all alert levels.

The Ministry of Health will be contacting all businesses that have already generated QR codes to provide them with new copies of their posters in case they have been damaged or removed.

Any business that has not already generated an official QR code can get started by visiting the Ministry of Health website.

QR code posters should be printed in A4, in colour if possible and should be displayed in a prominent place or near the main entrance. The top of the poster should be approximately 1300 mm from the ground so everyone can scan.

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