Covid 19 coronavirus: The ill-fated flight from India where 17 people have become infected since arriving in New Zealand

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A staggering 17 people who travelled from India to Auckland last month on a single flight have now tested positive for Covid-19.

Men, women and children have become infected over the past fortnight after travelling on the 20-hour Air India flight from Delhi that touched down in New Zealand on August 23.

The details come as the worldwide number of Covid cases passes 27 million, with a death toll of 890,000. India now has the second-largest number of confirmed cases in the world, 4.2 million - the US has had 6.3 million cases. Just over 71,000 people in India have died, the third-highest toll in the world.

The Ministry of Health revealed last month the first group of seven sick passengers from the Air India flight into New Zealand were detected during the routine day 3 testing in managed isolation.

On August 28, seven passengers - three men in their 30s, a woman in her 60s, a woman in her 20s and two children - all tested positive for Covid-19, a sudden surge in the country's imported Covid cases.

Health officials confirmed they all arrived in New Zealand on August 23 on the same Air India flight from Delhi, and tested positive around day 3 of their stay in managed isolation.

The next day a woman in her 70s and a man in his 30s, who were both staying at the Grand Millennium in Auckland and who both travelled on the same August 23 flight from India, tested positive.

Then on September 1, on a day 14 people tested positive to Covid, a woman in her 20s and another in her 30s, who were in managed isolation and who arrived from India on the same flight, were both found to have the infection.

Three days later on September 4, two children under 9, family members of previously identified cases on the flight, tested positive at the Auckland Jet Park quarantine facility.

The weekend brought two more cases linked to the flight.

Another child linked to a previously identified case tested positive on Saturday and a man in his 20s who had been staying in an Auckland isolation facility tested positive on Sunday.

The health ministry said he was a close contact of an existing confirmed case and tested positive after routine testing around day 12 of his stay. He is now in quarantine.

Yesterday, a pair of additional cases were added to the tally. Both were detected through testing in managed isolation and quarantine facilities.

The first was a boy and the second a woman in her 20s. Both arrived from India on August 23.

They were each a close contact of separate previously reported confirmed cases.

There are now 118 active cases in New Zealand. Of those, 41 are imported cases in quarantine facilities. A further 77 are community cases.

There are now 1425 cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand.