Te Rūnanga o Whaingaroa

As with the five other cases reported in recent days, these two cases were recent arrivals from overseas and both were detected within our managed isolation facilities.

Neither involves community transmission.

Today’s first case is the young child of the couple announced yesterday as cases who have recently arrived from India. We are pleased to report that all family members are doing well at the Jet Park Hotel, the quarantine facility in Auckland.

We will not be providing exact details of the child’s age but can say they are under two years old.

Today’s second confirmed case is a 59 year old woman who travelled from Delhi and who arrived in Auckland on 15 June on flight AI1316. She was tested while at the Grand Millennium managed isolation facility and was travelling with her partner who has also been tested and whose result is pending.  Active follow up is now underway. An update will be provided on Monday on this case and the follow up of other cases from last week.

This couple are also now in quarantine at the Jet Park.

Everyone who was at the Grand Millennium while these people were there has or will be tested as part of the testing at around days 3 and 12 that is now routine at all managed isolation facilities.  This result was picked up in the woman’s day three test and is an example of the new testing regime working as it should.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield has reiterated that we were always expecting to get new cases at our border as Kiwis return home from overseas.

“It is good that the systems are in place to detect these cases. Testing, particularly at the border, will continue to be an important part of our COVID-19 response.

“Yesterday New Zealand’s laboratories completed 5,950 tests, bringing the total completed to date to 341,117.

“This is a very high Saturday total, which again underscores the high capacity of our laboratories and the testing that continues in the community and across our managed isolation facilities.”

Numbers

Our total number of confirmed cases is now 1,161, which is the number we report to the World Health Organization.

Our combined total of confirmed and probable cases is now 1,511.

The number of recovered cases remains at 1,482.

There are no additional deaths to report.

There is no one in New Zealand receiving hospital-level care for COVID-19.

Follow-up on earlier cases

Extensive follow-up continues for the cases we reported earlier this week.

For the two cases who travelled from the UK, out of 386 people being followed up and tested as part of a precautionary approach, 288 negative tests have now been recorded. 25 people are still being contacted.

For the case who travelled from Pakistan, 207 people were identified for follow up as part of a precautionary approach, including those on the same flight. Of those, 25 people have been tested (who hadn’t already been or were to be tested as part of managed isolation protocols) with 15 negative test results to date.

177 further people will be captured by testing around day 12 in the managed isolation facility. To date, 94 of these people have been tested.

Efforts continue to follow up the small number of people who we have not managed to reach yet.

NZ COVID Tracer

NZ COVID Tracer has now recorded 573,000 registrations – that’s an increase of 2,000 since this time yesterday.

We continue to encourage as many people as possible to download and use the app – this will support our contact tracing efforts in Level 1.

It’s great news that more and more businesses and organisations are displaying their official QR codes. The number of posters created by businesses is now 63,160.

There have been 1,146,569 poster scans to date.

App fix

We’ve found and are fixing an issue which meant the app stopped scanning posters properly on android devices, after a user had been logged in for more than 30 days.

If a user’s phone is set to automatic updates, the fix will be applied over the next few days. Users can resolve the issue right away by logging out and logging back in on the ‘my profile’ screen. If they have forgotten their password, they can use the password reset function.

If a user downloaded the app 25 days ago or less, the bug won’t affect them.

If you are having problems, we definitely don’t advise deleting and reinstalling – that will cause all recorded locations to be deleted.

There are email addresses to contact our team if people need help.

The mailbox for app feedback is tracingapp-feedback@health.govt.nz.

The mailbox for businesses/organisations who want help with their QR codes is app@tracing.min.health.nz.