Six new cases in NZ today, four in community

There are six new cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand today, four in the community and two in managed isolation.

In a statement, the Ministry of Health says one of the imported cases was a man in his 20s who arrived from the Philippines on 3 September and was at a managed isolation facility when he tested positive on day 3 of his stay.

The other is a female in her late teens who arrived on the same flight from the Philippines and also tested positive on day three, it says.

The four new cases in the community were all linked to the Mt Roskill Evangelical Fellowship Church group within the Auckland August cluster. The ministry said the Auckland Regional Public Health was actively tracing and testing their contacts.

"Since August 11, our contact tracing team has identified 3274 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," the ministry said.

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.

There are four people in hospital with Covid - 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.

The total number of active Covid-19 cases is 123. Of those, 43 are imported cases in MIQ facilities, and 80 are community cases.

And the total number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 is now 1431.

Yesterday there were 4525 Covid tests processed, bringing the total number of tests completed to date to 823,154.

There are now 2.15 million registered users to the NZ Covid Tracer app and there have been 362,256 posters created.

The app has recorded 45,494,859 poster scans, and 2,529,729 manual diary entries.

Yesterday four new cases of of Covid-19 were reported in New Zealand, two in the community and two in managed isolation.

In the last fortnight, 26 people have tested positive after returning from India, 20 of them from one flight alone. India has overtaken Brazil to become the second worst-Covid hit country.

In New Zealand, thousands of Ports of Auckland workers are exempt from compulsory Covid-19 border testing, because they are not considered high risk.