Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield. Photo / Mark Mitchell
There are two new cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand today - in managed isolation.
And officials have confirmed three travellers who left New Zealand have now tested positive to Covid-19 overseas - one in South Korea and two in Australia.
That brings the total number of confirmed cases to 1212, the Ministry of Health confirmed in a statement today.
Both new cases are women travelling together. They are in their 20s and arrived from Pakistan via Dubai on 27 July. Both have been in managed isolation in the Sudima in Rotorua and are now being transferred to the quarantine facility in Auckland.
There were no new cases in New Zealand yesterday, marking the 91st day since the last case of Covid-19 was acquired locally from an unknown source.
In a statement, the Ministry of Health also revealed there is no evidence of any transmission in New Zealand involving the traveller who tested positive for Covid-19 on arrival in South Korea.
"All domestic contacts of this case tested to date have returned negative results," officials said in the statement.
"While these results reinforce that the public health risk from this case continues to be low, further contact tracing is taking place around their travel within New Zealand, including their visit to the Queenstown area in early July, the South Auckland area where they were based and Christchurch where they departed from."
In addition this weekend, the Ministry of Health is doing targeted surveillance in Queenstown, South Auckland and Christchurch – locations connected to the case in South Korea.
This person was in South Auckland from June 20 to July 20, Queenstown from July 1 to 4 and in and around Christchurch Airport on July 20 and 21, officials said.
The ministry said the surveillance testing was going well.
"From Auckland today we can report a steady number of people coming forward at four new model community testing centres which are open till 3pm this afternoon. There's still plenty of capacity across all the centres located at Northcote, Eden Terrace, Henderson and Wiri."
Testing in Christchurch has already been targeted to people who were at the limited number of locations the case visited while staying overnight in Christchurch on 20 July and also staff at Christchurch Airport who processed the flight he travelled on to Singapore.
The ministry today provided some context around two instances, involving female passengers who have travelled from Auckland to Sydney last month and tested positive there, as reported by the Herald.
"The first involves a woman who transited through Auckland from Los Angeles to Sydney on 6 July. At this point there are not considered to be any close contacts who need to be traced or tested but enquiries continue with both the airline and airport.
"The second involves a woman who travelled from Auckland to Sydney on 20 July. We have already talked directly with the person concerned," today's statement said.
Officials said, at this point, it appeared the person might have been a previously unconfirmed case from March and this was likely to have led to the positive test result.
"We will continue to fully investigate the circumstances of this positive result, including travel history."
This morning, the Herald reported that a New Zealand woman said she has tested positive for Covid-19 after flying from Auckland to Sydney just over a week ago.
The woman - who didn't want to be named - took off on July 20 aboard Air NZ flight NZ103 and went straight into quarantine in Sydney.
Australian authorities tested her on her second day in quarantine. Her results came back positive for Covid-19 on July 26.
Her positive result comes after another passenger was also revealed to have tested positive to Covid-19 after flying from Auckland to Sydney on July 6.
