Covid-19 weekend tally: Hawke's Bay has 24 new cases, no new locations of interest

Covid swab testing at Hastings Health Centre. Photo / Warren Buckland

Hawke's Bay's active Covid case tally has surpassed 100, with 24 new cases announced today .

The announcement meant the region's active case tally on Sunday was 120, in addition to the 92 recovered.

Nationally, there were 2522 new Covid cases yesterday , and 100 people in hospital - both new records.

The majority of the new cases - 1799 - were in Auckland, but cases are growing rapidly in other areas.

On Saturday, the principal of Taradale High School David Oliver posted a Covid update on the school's Facebook page.

"We have had a further three cases of Covid over the last two days in our school community," the post said.

"These cases are all among the close contacts of previous cases and were all self-isolating ahead of their positive tests.

"There are no further close contacts as a result of these cases."

Oliver said the school was keeping in contact with whanau of positive cases and close contacts, and would continue to provide assistance where we can.

"We continue to work with the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education to ensure the health and well-being of our akonga, staff and community.

"As always, this is our top priority."

On Friday Te Whare Morehu - Irongate School posted on Facebook, saying a student had tested positive for Covid.

The student was at school on February 10 and 11. At that stage, no close contacts had been identified and the school was operating as normal, with appropriate public health measures and cleaning procedures in place to ensure the school was a safe learning environment.

Why are there no additional locations of interest?

The Hawke's Bay DHB addressed this question and came up with the following response:

Locations of interest are linked to public exposure events – places and times where the public may have been exposed to Covid-19.

Not all exposure events will become locations of interest if health officials can identify everyone who may have been exposed (for example a flight, a hairdresser with booked appointments etc). These are considered private exposure events and those at risk will be contacted directly.

Locations of interest are removed after 14 days.

The type of contact at an event is a determining factor as to whether an event is classified as a location of interest. There are two types of contacts:

Casual contacts are people who have been in the same place at the same time as someone who is infectious with Covid-19 but may not have been near the infectious person.
Casual contacts are at the lowest risk of getting sick with Covid-19. The Ministry of Health will not always publish casual contact events.

However, close contact events will be published for all regions.

Wherever possible notifications are sent through the NZ Covid Tracer and Rippl apps to people who have scanned into public locations of interest.