There is one new case of COVID-19 in New Zealand's managed isolation and quarantine facilities, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield announced on Tuesday.
Tuesday's new case is a man in his 20s, who arrived in New Zealand on July 30 from Melbourne. He had been completing his 14 days of mandatory managed isolation at Auckland's Grand Millennium Hotel, and tested negative for COVID-19 following his first test on day three of his stay.
However, the man returned a positive result after his second test, which is undertaken at around day 12 of a returnee's stay. As part of routine testing, all new arrivals are tested twice before they are permitted to leave managed isolation and enter the community.
It has been 102 days since New Zealand's last case was acquired locally from an unknown source, indicating there is no evidence of community transmission.
New Zealand's confirmed case total now stands at 1220, with 22 cases currently considered active. All of the active cases were detected due to routine testing in managed isolation and quarantine facilities.
On Monday, 1874 tests were processed, of which 522 swabs were obtained from new arrivals in managed isolation facilities. The remaining tests were performed on those in the community.
Dr Bloomfield said the Ministry of Health will be announcing a new series of pop-up clinics across a range of district health boards as part of ongoing efforts to boost community testing rates.
"One of the things that has been really pleasing to see is people in the community have heard the message about the importance of testing, and we did see through the latter part of last week a number of days where we saw the testing volumes up around 4000 and 5000," Dr Bloomfield said, when asked why the target of completing 4000 tests per day had remained "elusive".
"Some days it is lower... It will go up and down, but our aim is to get around 4000 on average each day."
Ora Toa clinical director, Sean Hanna, reiterated that any Kiwi experiencing flu-like symptoms - whether it be coughing, a runny nose, or a fever - should contact their GP or ring Healthline to arrange a swab.
