August 23 2021
New Zealand will stay in alert level 4 lockdown until at least midnight on Friday, and Auckland will stay locked down until at least midnight on Tuesday next week. Earlier today it was announced there are now 107 Covid cases in NZ.
There are 35 new cases of Covid-19 in the New Zealand community to confirm today. Of these 33 are in Auckland and two are in Wellington.
This brings the total number in the community to 107. Of these 99 are in Auckland and eight are in Wellington.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield will front a press conference at 4pm to announce any challenges to alert levels. New Zealand is currently in lockdown until 11.59pm tomorrow.
All of today's new cases are either in or currently being transferred to managed isolation facilities.
The Ministry of Health says it was not unexpected to see a rise in cases.
There are also three new border cases all who are in managed isolation facilities.
There are now 334 visits to 248 locations of interest listed by the Ministry of Health. The vast majority of these are in Auckland, with at least 12 in Wellington and a few scattered across the North Island, as well as two flights between Auckland and Wellington.
The latest exposure sites include KFC in Pt Chevalier between 9pm and 10pm on Friday August 13.
There is also a new location outside Auckland, a visit to the Johnsonville Mobil petrol station in Wellington on Tuesday between 8.20pm and 8.35pm.
An additional south Auckland supermarket is now on the list with an infected shopper visiting PaknSave Clendon Park on Monday August 16 between 7pm and 7.30pm.
There is also a corner store in the same suburb, Clendon Dairy on Roscommon Rd that is also a potential exposure site. The Ministry of Health says if you visited the store between 11.30am and 12pm on Tuesday August 17 you must isolate at home for 14 day, get tested immediately and again on days 5 and 12 after last exposure.
More public bus rides between Glen Eden and Green Bay have also been added.
So far 13,230 contacts have been identified with less than half - 6773 - contacted by public health staff and self isolating.
The majority of the 13,230 contacts are close contacts and the number is expected to rise throughout the day as records are fully processed.
Public health staff are now reaching out to the remaining 6,457 contacts who are yet to be reached.
Hunt for Crowne Plaza public walkway pair
The Ministry of Health is still investigating how Covid was transferred from the New South Wales returnee at the Crowne Plaza into the community and is focusing on an open walkway while the case was in the lobby.
The public walkway is separated from the plaza by a perspex shield standing only about seven feet high.
A public walkway is separated from the Crowne Plaza MIQ facility by a screen. Photo / Michael Craig
Of the six people who walked through the walkway while the index case was in the lobby, four have been identified. Three have tested negative and one person is in the process of getting a test. Police are helping to identify the remaining two people.
The index case has been genomically linked to three other positive cases who were in a family bubble staying in the room next door at the MIQ facility in central Auckland.
As a result of the link between those cases, officials quickly put in place post-departure day five testing for returnees who were in the Crowne Plaza, and who were on the same floor and whose stay over-lapped with the infectious period of that original case.
The Crowne Plaza, currently thought to be the site where the Delta variant carried by a NSW returnee jumped from an MIQ facility to the community. Photo / Michael Craig
But how might have the virus travelled from the hotel into the community?
"It could have been passed from one person to another in the facility who's then left, or during transport from the airport to the hotel," Te Pūnaha Matatini Covid-19 modeller Professor Michael Plank said.
In Wellington and the Hutt Valley there are 11 community testing centres operating, as well as about 32 GPs also testing for Covid.
More than 3,850 tests were processed yesterday for the Wellington and Hutt Valley regions.
No new traces of Covid have been detected in any of the latest waste water samples.
ESR is working on adding additional wastewater testing sites to the current 41 sites across the country which covers 3.7 million New Zealanders. Of the 41 current sites, 13 are in Auckland and four are in Wellington.
There were 35,800 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine administered yesterday. This brings the total number of Kiwis with two doses to 1,007,801.
The Ministry of Health also reminded people who were at locations of interest at the relevant times that under the Section 70 notice they are legally required to follow the instructions regarding isolation and testing. Household members of anyone who has been at a location of interest or have been categorised as a close contact are also required to isolate until the contact has returned a negative day five test result.
Meanwhile, New South Wales has recorded 818 new local Covid cases and three deaths, news.com reports.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said: "The number we need to focus on is the vaccination rate. Once we get to 70% double dose vaccination rate ... we can treat Covid-19 like the flu."
She described today's 818 cases as "another huge number", and warned that "at least" 42 people were infectious in the community.
Lockdown breaches
Twenty-nine people have been charged with a total of 33 offences since alert level 4 began, mostly due to anti-lockdown protests, Police Commissioner Andrew Coster says.
Of the 33 charges filed, 16 are for Failing to Comply with Order (Covid-19), 12 for Failure to Comply with Direction/Prohibition/Restriction and five for Health Act breaches.
In the same period, 85 people were issued with formal warnings.
Thirty-two of the formal warnings were for Failing to Comply with Order (Covid-19), 21 for Failure to Comply with Direction/Prohibition/Restriction and 32 for Health Act breaches.
Police have received a total of 5848 online breach notifications – 3526 about a gathering, 1788 about a business, and 534 about an individual.
From 19 August, Police began issuing infringements for Covid-19 related breaches.
Police have issued 365 infringements as of 5pm yesterday.
The breakdown of these total offences is as follows: • Person failed to remain at current home / residence – 328 • Person failed to wear a face covering on premises – 15 • Person failed to comply with applicable physical distancing rule – 13 • Obstruct/Hinder Medical Officer of Health or Person Assisting Med Officer – 6 • Person failed to wear a face covering on public transport – 2 • Person in control of premises failed to close as required – 1
Over the weekend four people in Northland were arrested after police investigating two separate alert level breaches also found evidence of drug-related offending.
In Whangamatā, Police had to remind a steady flow of people that the fine weather was not an invitation to take a Sunday drive to the beach or do a recycling drop-off at the local transfer station. Police issued a number of formal warnings as a result.
And in Taupō a mountain biker who fell on a bike track had to be winched out by rescue helicopter and taken to hospital.
Covid Response Minister Chris Hipkins said yesterday if he was in Auckland he would expect to remain in lockdown for longer as cases in the city continue to rise.
However, it is possible that parts of the country could drop alert levels sooner than others.
The caution around moving levels elsewhere was the tens of thousands of people who had left Auckland since the first community case was identified and the country moved into lockdown, Associate Health Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall told morning media.
The Government is warning that the number of cases may continue to rise in the next five days before the curve starts to fall later in the week.
Verrall told the AM Show it was possible there could be a high number of Covid cases today, compared with previous days.
Yesterday there were 21 new Delta cases in the community taking the total number to 72.
Of these 66 people are infected in Auckland, and the remaining six are in Wellington.
There are currently five people in hospital, however none were in ICU, Verrall confirmed this morning.
There are also now more than 300 locations of interest with the mast majority in Auckland. They include Auckland CBD fast-food restaurants McDonald's, Taco Bell and Starbucks.
This morning six new Auckland locations of interest were added to the Ministry of Health's website.
A number of South Auckland supermarkets have been identified as potential exposure sites with local testing stations warning those seeking tests to expect a minimum four hour wait.
