Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has set out a plan to start re-opening the borders, starting with a trial this year of home isolation or shorter MIQ stays for selected travellers
There are four new cases of Covid-19 in MIQ today, two historical cases and none in the community.
Ten previously reported cases have recovered since Friday's update. The number of active cases in New Zealand is 39.
Since January 2021, there have been 119 historical cases, out of a total of 745 cases. The seven-day rolling average of new cases detected at the border is five.
New Zealand's total number of confirmed cases is 2563.
Two of the new cases had arrived from Australia on August 10, and their infection was picked up on routine day 3 testing.
One of the other cases arrived from the United Kingdom on August 11 via Qatar and Australia, and tested positive on day 1.
The last case arrived on August 12 from Hungary via Germany, also travelling through the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia. They tested positive on arrival.
The two historical cases arrived on August 4 from India and August 10 from Japan. Both of these had been under investigation leading to a delay in reporting.
On Saturday there were 43,348 vaccine doses administered, taking the total overall to 2.48 million. Of these, 1.57m are first doses and 910,731 are second doses.
But the Covid-19 situation across the Tasman continues to escalate.
NSW suffered its worst day of the pandemic yesterday with 466 new cases and four deaths, prompting Premier Gladys Berejiklian to unveil a police operation to enforce lockdown compliance across Sydney.
Today, New South Wales recorded 415 new local cases of Covid-19 and four new deaths.
The new deaths take the death toll in the latest outbreak to 48 and include a woman in her 50s, a woman in her 70s, a woman in her 80s and a man in his 80s.
The entire state was later plunged into a seven-day lockdown, which was announced suddenly via social media, giving regional residents little time to prepare and sparking fury online. All 7.95 million NSW residents in are now in lockdown.
Meanwhile, Fiji continues to experience a decline in daily case numbers, but the death toll continues to rise.
Health Secretary James Fong reported there were a total of 644 new cases in the 24-hour reporting period to 8am on Friday - down from a seven-day average in July that peaked at around 1200 daily cases.
On Friday Fiji reported another 15 deaths from Covid-19, taking the toll to 360.
Last week Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern outlined how a phased resumption of quarantine-free travel would resume with three "pathways of travel" into New Zealand.
For vaccinated travellers from low-risk countries, no isolation would be required. For vaccinated travellers from medium-risk countries, some isolation would be required – but it could be a shorter stay in MIQ or home isolation.
Coupled with the reopening is a drive to get as many people vaccinated as possible by the end of the year.
