No new community cases; 3 cases of Covid-19 in MIQ

Ministry of Health update

March 26, 2021

There are no new community cases to report today. There are 3 new positive cases of Covid-19 to report in managed isolation.

Grand Millennium managed isolation facility Auckland
The investigation into how a cleaner at the Grand Millennium, referred to as Case A, was exposed to Covid-19 is continuing. Case A and a household member whose result is under investigation remain at the Auckland quarantine facility.

The household member has returned a second negative test at Day 5, which reinforces the belief that their initial weak positive test was either a false positive or an early and fleeting mild infection that has now passed. This person continues to be managed as a close contact and is not considered to be a confirmed case at this stage.

All close and casual contacts of Case A have returned negative initial tests. They are due to have their Day 5 tests today and tomorrow. Results of those will come in over the weekend.

Grand Mercure managed isolation facility Auckland
Yesterday we announced that as part of investigations into a recent Day 12 positive case at the Grand Mercure managed isolation facility in Auckland, health officials are now looking at the possibility of a transmission within this facility.

Contact tracing teams are contacting the 250 returnees who have left the facility since March 10; asking them to get tested immediately and remain at home until they have had a negative test result returned.

As at 9am this morning, 193 of those 250 people have been contacted and the remaining people are being followed up today. If you are one of these people, please get in touch with Healthline.

We also yesterday put in place immediate additional steps including additional onsite testing and exit tests for all returnees leaving the facility. The public health risk from the Grand Mercure is considered low.

Covid-19 reporting
There are 3 new positive cases of Covid-19 to report in managed isolation. The seven-day rolling average of new cases detected at the border is 5.

The total number of active cases in New Zealand today is 74.

Our total number of confirmed cases is 2123.

Since January 1, 2021, there have been 41 historical cases, out of a total of 311 cases.

New border case details

*Both cases, part of separate travel bubbles, are contacts of travel companions that have tested positive.

Testing information
On Thursday, 7117 tests were processed. The seven-day rolling average up to yesterday is 4944 tests processed.

The total number of tests processed by laboratories to date is 1,875,086.

For up-to-date information on testing locations in Auckland, visit https://www.arphs.health.nz/ and for all testing locations nationwide, visit the Healthpoint website.

NZ Covid Tracer
NZ Covid Tracer now has 2,764,505 registered users.

Poster scans have reached 231,767,115 and users have now created more than 8,770,858 manual diary entries.

It’s incredibly important we all scan the QR codes wherever we see them, as the more we all scan, the safer we’ll all be. If you can’t scan then please keep a record of where you have been. The NZ Covid Tracer app is one way to do this through the manual entry option.

A reporting error meant Covid Tracer app data in yesterday’s media release was incorrect, and QR code scan numbers were under-reported by approximately 300,000 scans. The data reporting is being manually corrected. The data reported today is accurate.

Ministry of Health updates
The next scheduled updates will be on Saturday and Sunday.