New Zealand has recorded one new case of COVID-19, which was caught in managed isolation.
The case is a man in his 30s who arrived in New Zealand on June 21 from Kenya. He travelled via Doha and Brisbane and has been staying at the Novotel Ellerslie. After testing positive around day 3 of his mandatory managed isolation, he was moved to the Jet Park Hotel quarantine facility on Friday.
That means New Zealand now has 14 active cases of COVID-19, all of which are in managed isolation or quarantine facilities. There are no cases in the community.
Overall, New Zealand has had 1170 confirmed cases of the illness. On Thursday, there were 9825 tests completed by labs, taking our total to 378,257.
The Ministry of Health has confirmed there will still be wide testing of people with cold or flu-like symptoms as part of community and surveillance testing. A clarification to the case definition on Thursday means not everyone who is tested needs to self-isolate while they are awaiting the results of their test.
Only those with respiratory symptoms and with one or more of the following conditions applying to them in the last 14 days should get tested:
- Contact with a confirmed of probable case
- International travel
- Direct contact with someone who has travelled overseas
- History of working on an international aircraft or shipping vessel
- [Have been] cleaning at international airport or maritime ports or areas frequently visited by international visitors
Between June 9 and 16, 55 people were granted an exemption from managed isolation on compassionate grounds. One had their approval withdrawn and remained in isolation for the full two weeks. Forty have returned negative tests, while 14 will not be tested either "on the basis of health, because they are a child, they have declined, they can no longer be contacted or they have left the country".
"These people have been assessed as presenting a very low risk due to the nature of their exemption, adherence to their required protocols and the negative test results of people associated with their bubble.
"Of returnees at the Novotel from June 6-13, we had referred five people to finding services. Enforcement and other finding services have not been able to find further contact details for these people, who are considered low risk."
Of 2159 people who completed their full 14 days in managed isolation between June 9 and 16, 1186 have tested negative for COVID-19, of which 800 were tested before leaving managed isolation. A further 199 have been referred for a test, "which we do not yet have a result for".
"We are still in the process of connecting with 632 people. As needed we will refer people we do not make contact with to finding services. 164 of these had invalid phone numbers, so have been referred to finding services.
"We have had 142 people who will not be tested because of reasons such as being a child, being part off repositioning crew, currently being overseas or they are refusing a test. 71 people have refused testing."
The New Zealand COVID-19 Tracer App has now had 581,000 registrations and authorities continue to encourage people to download the application. There have been 75,147 posters created for businesses and 1,239,674 scans to date.
