Wellington remains at alert level 2 after a traveller from Australia visited the city last weekend and subsequently tested positive for COVID-19. The tourist arrived in the capital just after midnight on Saturday and returned to Sydney on Monday morning.
So far no community cases have been reported in Wellington, though Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield says the results from tests on Thursday afternoon and Friday will be critical in guiding the Government's ongoing response to the situation.
What you need to know:
No cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the community so far.
Wellington moved to alert level 2 at 6pm on Wednesday and will remain under the measures until at least 11:59pm on Sunday, subject to a review.
The Australian traveller arrived in Wellington on Saturday at 12:12am on a Qantas flight. They returned to Sydney on Monday, June 21 at 10:13am. They were a tourist and visited a number of locations while in the country.
Four close contacts of the case have so far tested negative.
The travel bubble with New South Wales will be paused for a further 12 days, officials said on Thursday evening.
The case is believed to have contracted the Delta variant, which is more infectious and potentially more harmful than the original virus and its other variants.
More testing sites opened in Wellington on Thursday to cope with the spike in demand for COVID-19 tests. A list of those site locations is available here.
Locations of interest
Qantas Flight QF163 Sydney to Wellington, Rydges Hotel, Unichem Wellington Central Pharmacy, Te Papa Tongarewa - general, Te Papa Tongarewa - Exhibition Surrealist Art: Masterpieces from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Jack Hackett's Bar, Floridita's Restaurant, Highwater Eatery, Pickle & Pie café, The Weta Cave shop, The Lido café, Unity Books, Countdown Cable Lane, One Red Dog, the toilets at 4 Kings Bar, Prince Barbers and Wellington Airport.
More information about times and dates can be found here.
These live updates have finished.
4:50pm - Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's trade mission to Australia has been deferred due to COVID-19.
Ardern was supposed to lead a trade and promotional delegation to Australia in early July. It was the first since the pandemic hit and will now be later this year.
4:15pm - Chris Hipkins says the Government is working on contingency plans for Kiwis stuck in Sydney during the latest pause of the trans-Tasman bubble. The travel bubble with New South Wales was initially paused for 72 hours, before being extended for a further 12 days.
"We will work now over that 12-day period to prepare contingency plans so that should we not be in a position to remove the travel pause at that point, we will have alternative arrangements in place, which is the work that we did around Victoria," Hipkins told Stuff.
3:50pm - Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the Government is considering "additional restrictions" on Australia, including pre-departure testing, as a result of the Wellington scare.
3:30pm - Another expert, Arindam Basu, an associate professor of epidemiology and health sciences at the University of Canterbury, says the lack of new community cases shows the effectiveness of New Zealand's elimination strategy.
"Community transmission with a new strain usually takes a few rounds of 'introductions' either in a community of people with no prior infection or eliminated infection. The person who turned out positive needs to be 'reverse contact traced' as to the origin of a potential superspreading event, in all likelihood this person may not have transmitted or triggered spread of infection.
"Nevertheless, border restrictions, respiratory hygiene and use of masks in public transit and indoors plus leaving contact traces (scanning), and a relatively high rate of vaccination will be necessary to keep new strains at bay," Basu says.
3:20pm - Professor Michael Plank, of Te Pūnaha Matatini and University of Canterbury, says news there are no positive results after more than 10,000 tests on Thursday is "encouraging", as is the fact follow-up tests on the infected Sydney man's close contacts are negative.
"But it's still much too soon to conclude that there has been no community transmission of the virus. There are over 1,000 known contacts yet to be tested or awaiting results," he says.
"We know from the Sydney man's movements that people may have been infected in Wellington on Sunday or even Monday morning. These people could still be in the incubation period. So, we will need to wait for test results to come in over the next couple of days to know more. In the meantime, the current time frame for alert level 2 to continue until Sunday night is sensible. This limits the potential for future transmission from people who may still be incubating the virus."
3:05pm - A total of 10,749 tests were processed on Thursday, with 3173 of those processed in the greater Wellington area.
The total number of tests processed by laboratories to date is 2,253,275.
2:40pm - The Government has set up additional testing sites in the Wellington region.
Testing is now available at:
- Wellington Central, 196-200 Taranaki Street. Open until 6 this evening and will reopen at 8am tomorrow
- Te Papa pop-up, 55 Cable Street. Open until 6 this evening and will reopen at 9am tomorrow
- Wellington Regional Hospital, 17 Mein Street. Open until 5 this evening and will reopen at 8am tomorrow.
- Haitaitai Park pop-up, Ruahine Street. Open until 5 this evening and will reopen at 10am tomorrow
- Johnsonville Medical Centre, 24 Moorefield Road. Open until 5pm and will reopen at 9.30am tomorrow.
- Cannons Creek, 178 Bedford Street, Porirua. Open until 5 this evening and will reopen at 8am tomorrow
- Lower Hutt pop-up, Riverbank carpark. Open until 6 this evening and will reopen at 9am tomorrow
- Kapiti, Coastlands Shopping Centre. Open 5 this evening and will reopen at 12.30pm tomorrow. Bookings essential.
- Wairarapa, located at various medical centres. Open standard business hours, and after-hour testing is provided at Masterton Medical Centre, 4 Colombo Road.
1:57pm - Two recent returnees have tested positive for COVID-19 in managed isolation facilities since the ministry's last update on Thursday.
The number of active cases in New Zealand is 19.
Our total number of confirmed cases is 2369.
One returnee, who arrived on June 22 from the UK via Singapore, tested positive on the first day of their stay in managed isolation. The second landed in New Zealand on June 23 from the Philippines via Singapore and tested positive on arrival. Both are quarantining in Auckland.
1:45pm - The Government's press conference has now come to an end.
1:40pm - Hipkins said he has been minister in charge of the country's COVID-19 response for almost a full year now. When asked how the past 12 months had been he said, "there's never been a dull day during that time".
"COVID-19 doesn't stop and so as a result during that period of time I haven't either," he said.
He said New Zealand had become "comfortable" in the face of the threat of COVID-19 but we need to stay vigilant.
1:39pm - He said the Cook Islands had "not directly" raised any concerns with him about its travel bubble with New Zealand, despite the latest scare in Wellington.
1:35pm - Hipkins said it would be "challenging" to make QR code scanning mandatory and doing so would not be practical. "At this point I'm not convinced it would neccesary help us or make a difference in the uptake," he said.
1:27pm - Dr Bloomfield said the response by Wellingtonians to isolate and get tested so far has been good. He said of the 550 people told to self-isolate, 248 have tested negative so far.
1:24pm - Hipkins said he wouldn't comment on what decision the Government might make to end or extend alert level 2 on Sunday.
"We are certainly still in that period where there is increased risk."
Cabinet will review alert levels on Sunday morning.
1:16pm - New South Wales has recorded another 22 community cases of COVID-19, with authorities there announcing stay-at-home orders for people in Woolhara, Waverley, Randwick and the City of Sydney. Hipkins said the Government will consider the option of requiring pre-departure tests from Australian travellers.
1:15pm - Dr Bloomfield said the testing results so far were "encouraging" but we are "not out of the woods yet".
1:12pm - He said 1752 people had been identified as contacts. Of those, 532 had returned negative test results while eight had left the country and returned overseas. Authorities were still awaiting results for the remaining 1212 people. The outstanding results are expected later today.
1:08pm - Dr Bloomfield says two new cases have been recorded in managed isolation and quarantine facilities.
1:05pm - Wastewater testing shows no COVID-19 has been detected in Wellington, the Hutt Valley or Porirua.
1pm - No new positive results have been recorded in the community on Friday, Hipkins says. A total of 10,749 tests were processed on Thursday.
12:50pm - COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins and Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield will provide an update on Wellington's coronavirus response at 1pm.
It's expected Hipkins and Dr Bloomfield will reveal further information about the results of the widespread testing campaign in the capital, after a positive case visited last weekend.
