Ministry of Health Covid-19 update
July 14, 2020
Today there is one new case of Covid-19 to report in managed isolation in New Zealand.
It has been 74 days since the last case of Covid-19 was acquired locally from an unknown source.
Today’s case is a woman in her 60s who arrived in New Zealand on June 30 from Pakistan via Doha and Sydney.
She has been in managed isolation at the Novotel in Christchurch and tested negative at her first test around day 3 of her stay, then tested positive around day 12 of her stay in isolation.
Today’s case emphasises why we test people twice during their time in managed isolation.
The second test around day 12 is needed because the infection may take longer to develop in some people and is one of the checks used to find out if a person can leave managed isolation.
This case brings our total number of confirmed cases to 1195, which is the number we report to the World Health Organization.
One previously reported case is now considered to have recovered from Covid-19, so the total number of active cases in New Zealand remains at 25.
There is no one in New Zealand receiving hospital-level care for Covid-19.
Yesterday our laboratories completed 1,620 tests, which brings the total number of tests completed to date to 431,263.
NZ Covid Tracer
NZ CovidTracer has now recorded 595,400 registrations.
The number of posters created is 77,714 and the number of poster scans is 1,418,362.
The next update to the app will be released at the end of this month to make it a more comprehensive contact tracing tool and increase the number of people who can use it.
The main new feature will be the ability to manually add entries to your ‘digital diary’, either at the time or retrospectively.
This will allow app users to record visits to locations that don’t have a QR code on display, such as visits to friends and whanau, which means people will be able to keep track of everywhere they go.
This does not remove the need for all businesses and organisation to get and display their QR codes.
The update will also improve the app’s compatibility, particularly with Android 6 and iOS 11.
We want as many people as possible to be able to use the app and are very aware that many people with older devices are likely to be from our most vulnerable communities.
The update won’t in any way affect privacy or security of information stored on the app. The locations entered into the digital diary – whether scanned or added manually – will be stored securely on each person’s phone unless they choose to share their digital diary with us.
It remains important for everyone to be recording their movements so that if needed, our contact tracing team can quickly identify and isolate anyone who may have been exposed to the virus.
