No new community cases; 2 cases of Covid-19 in MIQ

Ministry of Health update
March 30, 2021

There are no new Covid-19 community cases to report and 2 new Covid-19 border related cases to report in managed isolation. The seven-day rolling average of new cases detected at the border is 4.

Grand Mercure managed isolation facility
The investigation into the Day 12 case at the Grand Mercure managed isolation facility in Auckland continues. The total number of returnees in this group has increased to 344 as it includes the last returnees who needed additional monitoring to leave the hotel. They are now isolating at home until they return negative test results. The assessment was that this additional step was needed until yesterday, and it has now been lifted for anyone leaving the facility from today.

As at 9am this morning, a total of 340 of the 344 returnees to have left the Grand Mercure have been contacted. Of those, 315 have returned negative results, one returned a positive result which is classified as a historical infection on the basis of further testing and serology results. Historical cases are not considered to be infectious. There have been no results yet for 28.

Covid-19 case numbers
There are 2 new Covid-19 cases to report in managed isolation. Eight people have now recovered.

The total number of active cases in New Zealand today is 80.

Our total number of confirmed cases is 2139.

Since 1 January 2021, there have been 42 historical cases, out of a total of 327 cases.

* These cases travelled together and arrived in New Zealand on the same flight as the 10 new positive Covid-19 cases that were reported yesterday. They have been moved to the Auckland quarantine facility.

These recent positive cases do not necessarily indicate an issue with pre-departure testing, since people may not have been infectious at the time of pre-departure testing. They may have been incubating the virus at the time or be exposed to the virus after being tested.

The Ministry does not consider these recent cases from India as entirely unexpected, given India is reporting the highest number of daily Covid-19 cases worldwide at present. These cases again underscore the value of having the day 0/1 testing in place. All people arriving into New Zealand must remain in their rooms until those day 0/1 tests results come back.

Testing update
On Monday, 3,722 tests were processed. In the last week 35,490 tests have been processed, with a seven-day rolling average up to yesterday of 5,070 tests processed.

The total number of tests processed by laboratories to date is 1,890,809.

For up-to-date information on all testing locations nationwide is available on the Healthpoint website https://www.healthpoint.co.nz/covid-19/.

NZ Covid Tracer
NZ Covid Tracer now has 2,768,382 registered users.

Total poster scans have reached 235,338,298 and users have created 8,863,183 manual diary entries. There have been 795,505 poster scans in the last 24 hours to 1pm yesterday.