Covid 19 coronavirus: no cases today – four days without new infection in the community

New Zealand heads into the weekend with no new Covid-19 cases today.

A total of 54 people linked to the Auckland group remain in a quarantine facility.

Of those people, 22 tested positive for the virus and their household contacts.

There are four people with Covid in the hospital.

One patient is at Auckland City Hospital, another at North Shore Hospital and two people at Middlemore Hospital, south of the city.

Three of those people in the hospital are isolated in a ward.

One person is in the Middlemore intensive care unit.

That news comes after authorities said yesterday that no one was in the ICU.

Since August 12, the Ministry of Health’s contact tracing team has identified 3,912 close case contacts, of which 3,908 have been contacted and are self-isolating.

Health officials said: “We are in the process of contacting the rest.”

Of those active cases, 33 are imported cases in isolation quarantine facilities run across the country.

A total of 37 people are community cases.

With zero cases reported today and with seven people believed to have recovered from the virus, New Zealand now has 70 active cases of Covid-19.

The total number of confirmed Covid cases stands at 1,458 and is the figure that has been reported to the World Health Organization.

The laboratories processed 7,360 Covid-19 tests yesterday. That brings the total number of tests completed to date to 897,077.

Cases of yesterday

It comes after seven new positive cases were announced yesterday at the border.

All of those cases were from people in isolation facilities run across the country and were from residents or citizens who had recently returned from India, Uzbekistan and Indonesia.

None of the cases was within the community or, more importantly, linked to the latest Auckland group.

The most recent case in the community is that of a girl, under 10 years old, who tested positive for the virus on Monday and is linked to the Botany subgroup.

The young man is a close contact of a person who had previously tested positive for the virus and, as a result, had been in isolation since August 30.

The mandatory 14-day quarantine period had just ended on Sunday when the girl and three other close contacts were dropped off at Chapel Downs Elementary School on Monday morning around 8:30 a.m.

However, around 9 a.m., the four were picked up from the school grounds after the family was notified that the girl had tested positive for Covid-19.

The fact that the pupil had been to school that day, albeit very briefly, was not made known to the school until Wednesday afternoon.

As a result, the school – in Flat Bush, South Auckland – has been closed by health authorities until at least Monday; as it is cleaned and close contacts are identified and contacted.

The Auckland Regional Public Health Service has spent the last few days contacting those who are considered close contacts of the child. However, that number was said to be “very small,” authorities said yesterday.

A spokeswoman for the Health Ministry told the Herald today that the girl’s family was told she had tested positive for Covid-19 at 8.39 a.m. Monday.

“This timeline means that there was a period on Monday morning when the family would have been unaware of the child’s positive result.

“It was then that the boy, who was asymptomatic, was briefly on the school grounds but was picked up after notification of the result,” he said.

“As soon as the formal notification was received, steps were taken to alert the family and appropriate interviews and contact tracing were carried out.”

There have been three deaths related to the August Auckland group: Dr. Joe Williams and brothers Alan and Nigel Te Hiko.

Alan Te Hiko became the first person connected to the group to succumb to the virus on September 4. Hours later, Williams also died.

Te Hiko’s whānau confirmed the death of his second family member to die from the virus, Nigel Te Hiko, on Tuesday afternoon.

As of yesterday, the latest figures showed that there were 178 people connected to the Auckland August group.