The Director-General of Health has announced New Zealand has five new cases of COVID-19.
Two are imported cases and three are community cases. All three community cases are epidemiologically linked to the Auckland August cluster and are linked to the Mt Roskill Evangelical Fellowship church group. They were already in isolation.
The two imported cases are children of previously positive cases.
Since August 11, 3191 close contacts of cases have been identified, of which 3136 have been contacted and are isolating.
There are 82 people from the cluster at the Auckland quarantine facility, including 59 positive cases and their families. That number declines as our cases recover.
Six people with COVID-19 are in hospital. One in Auckland Hospital, one in Middlemore, two in North Shore Hospital and two in Waikato. Four are on a ward and two are in ICU. Those two are in Middlemore and Waikato.
There are eight new recovered cases, taking our active case total to 112. Thirty-seven of these are imported and 75 are community cases.
We have recorded 1413 confirmed cases overall.
On Thursday, 9909 tests were processed, taking our total to 797,990 tests.
The COVID Tracer app has recorded 2 million users and there have been 355,668 posters created. There have been more than 35 million poster scans and 2.3 million manual diary entries.
Kiwis are still being asked to get tested if they are symptomatic or have been in contact with close contacts. Testing stations will be located at key areas, such as places of worship.
Police will be visible this weekend in Auckland to ensure restrictions - such as the mass gathering limit - are complied with. Aucklanders are asked to "keep it small" and remember to apply level 2.5 settings to themselves wherever they are in the country.
Dr Ashley Bloomfield says the level of uptake of mask use and the COVID Tracer app shows that "most people are very aware of and engaged with what they need to do". He said we may need to keep this up for a while.
You can read more about Jacinda Ardern's alert level announcement here.
Auckland is currently under alert level 2.5, meaning people can move around and in and out of the super city, businesses can reopen to customers and schools can operate. However, mass gatherings are limited to 10 people.
The rest of the country remains at alert level 2, as it has been since the Auckland August cluster emerged.
Face masks are compulsory on public transport and from Friday, QR codes must also be displayed.
These alert level settings will remain until at least 11:59pm on September 16. A review will occur on September 14.
Prime Minister Ardern says the Auckland cluster remains contained and there is no need for Auckland to move back into alert level 3.
On Thursday, the director of Auckland Regional Public Health Service Dr William Rainger said New Zealand can be confident we "are on top of" the cluster.
"The epidemic curve peaked about two weeks ago, it is undulating downwards. We have had the Mt Roskill church congregation, which has given it a little spike, but the direction of travel is downwards."
Health Minister Chris Hipkins echoed that and said officials would be keeping watch over the nature of new cases. Apart from a recent case which is under investigation, all community cases are either epidemiologically or genomically linked to the one cluster.
"The ones that aren't connected are the ones to worry about," Hipkins said.
Both officials said we can expect to see cases emerge for the coming weeks and emphasised the need for continued testing and for people to isolate if they are close contacts and become unwell.
