New Zealand health officials are waiting on more information from their Australian counterparts over a fresh community outbreak in New South Wales. Photo / Getty Images
New Zealand health officials are waiting on more information from their Australian counterparts over a fresh community outbreak in New South Wales. Photo / Getty Images
There are no new cases of Covid-19 in the community but one in managed isolation.
The latest case came from the United Arab Emirates and arrived here on April 24. The person tested positive on day 12 during routine testing at an Auckland managed isolation facility.
It means there are now 26 active cases in New Zealand.
With imported cases of Covid-19 down to a trickle, focus has shifted to the current crisis in New South Wales that has officials scrambling to work out how an infection jumped quarantine and into the community.
Yesterday, thousands of travellers had plans disrupted after the Government paused flights from New South Wales for 48 hours as a precautionary response to two community cases in Sydney.
The health ministry today said New Zealand officials remained in contact with their Australian counterparts after the confirmation of two positive cases of Covid-19 in Sydney.
The pause to the transtasman bubble is limited to flights from NSW, and began at midnight.
At this stage, the risk remained low, said the ministry.
Officials are due to provide a further update on the situation in Sydney later today.
Director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said today the move to pause travel was so authorities could see what further results emerged.
Overnight, New South Wales health officials added more locations of interest in relation to the Sydney Covid cases.
Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said the risk was low, even though about 6000 people had flown into New Zealand from NSW since the Sydney cases emerged.
While the eastern state has not gone into lockdown, restrictions have been put in place, including compulsory masks in indoor venues and gatherings limited to 20 people.
Genome sequencing has linked the index case, a man in his 50s, to a traveller who arrived from the US, and who was moved to a quarantine facility on April 28.
One of the man's household contacts, a woman in her 50s, returned a positive test yesterday.
But it remains unclear how they caught the virus, meaning there could be several links in the chain of transmission between them and the traveller who might still be in the community without knowing they have the virus.
Neither the man nor the woman had recently travelled overseas, worked in a hotel quarantine, border or health role, or came into contact with someone who did.
Meanwhile, all 32 people in New Zealand who had self-identified as being in a location of interest after the Brisbane Airport green zone breach have now been followed up. Of these, 25 have returned negative test results. Two people have returned to Australia, and health authorities had assessed the remaining five people and advised that they did not require any further action.
The ministry said any remaining passengers who weren't at the locations of interest at the specified times previously advised should continue monitoring their health and if symptoms develop, call Healthline and get a test.
The risk from this breach continued to be assessed as low, the ministry said.
The ministry said there had now been 2278 confirmed cases since the outbreak began more than a year ago. Since the start of the year there had been 55 historical cases out of 462 cases.
