There are two new cases of coronavirus at New Zealand's border, new Health Minister Chris Hipkins has announced.
There remains no evidence of community transmission, and it has now been 67 days since a COVID-19 case was contracted locally by an unknown source.
"Both cases reported today are returnees who are staying at the Sudima Hotel in Christchurch., Hipkins said in a press conference from Parliament on Tuesday afternoon.
"The first case is a woman in her 20s, and the second case is a woman in her 30s. They are from the same extended family, and both arrived back in New Zealand from Afghanistan on a repatriation flight on July 2.
"Both tested positive as part of routine testing around day 3 of their stay in a managed isolation facility."
The total number of confirmed coronavirus cases - the number reported to the World Health Organization - has climbed to to 1186, Hipkins revealed.
Two more people are considered to have recovered from COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, meaning the number of active cases in New Zealand's managed isolation facilities remains at 22.
On Monday, New Zealand laboratories undertook 1641 COVID-19 tests, bringing the total number of tests completed to date to 416,924.
But Hipkins says the number of tests completed in recent times "does not meet the Government's expectation", and says he has instructed health officials to ramp up the rate of testing over the next week.
"I'm not going to instruct doctors on who should be tested - they need to use their judgement on that," he said.
"But in doing so, the health officials who oversee the system need to be making sure that we're still preserving a sufficient rate of testing to be confident that should anything happen, we pick that up."
Testing capacity is not an issue for the Government, Hipkins says, with health officials able to carry out 13,000 tests a day if required. He says increased testing is to ensure Kiwis can be confident that there is no community transmission.
Earlier in the press conference, Hipkins revealed the person who was receiving treatment in Auckland City Hospital after contracting the disease has now been discharged, and has been returned to a quarantine facility.
The number of Kiwis who have downloaded the NZ COVID Tracer app has increased to 590,000, Hipkins added, and there have been 1.36 million poster scans to date.
