Ministry of Health Covid-19 update
From Director of Public Health Dr Caroline McElnay
April 24, 2020
Today there are five new cases of Covid-19 to report – made up of two new confirmed cases and three new probable cases.
The combined total of confirmed and probable cases in New Zealand is 1456.
Of the new cases we are reporting today, one is linked to overseas travel, three are linked to an existing cluster, and one is still under investigation, possibly linked to overseas travel.
Sadly, today we are reporting the death of a man in his 60s who was a resident at Rosewood Rest Home & Hospital in Christchurch. He is the second resident from the hospital level wing of Rosewood to pass away.
This man had underlying health conditions and was considered to be a probable case of Covid-19 based on his exposure history and clinical symptoms.
This man is the 10th person from the Rosewood cluster to pass away.
This illustrates, once again, the impact this disease can have, especially on vulnerable people.
There are now 1095 reported cases of Covid-19 which we can confirm have recovered – an increase of 30 on yesterday.
Today there are eight people in hospital. That total includes one person in the ICU in Middlemore.
There are still 16 significant clusters – with only one case newly attributed to a significant cluster. In total, we have recorded 379 people as recovered from Covid-19 who were considered part of a significant cluster.
In terms of testing, yesterday we completed another new record of 6961 tests, with total tests to date of 108,238.
