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The Ministry of Health reports three new cases of COVID-19 and, for the first time, six historical cases.
Those six Waikato landmark cases are made up of one confirmed case dating back to February and five probable landmark cases related to the February case.
“These cases do not present any risk to the public,” says the Ministry of Health.
“This infection occurred at the end of February after exposure to an infected person from Italy (another family member).”
The ministry says the family member was visiting New Zealand at the time he was feeling unwell with COVID-19 symptoms. So the family in general felt bad.
“At the time, they did not meet the case definition for testing for people with defined symptoms who had traveled from or transited China. At that time, Italy had not been identified as a country of concern. This meant that home New Zealand was untested at the time, “says the ministry.
“Today’s confirmed historical case (a man) recently developed a sore throat and sought the test. The weak positive result, combined with the serological test results and the case history, is consistent with an old infection. In this case stage, only the male will be counted a confirmed case since he has given a weak positive result in the PCR test. The other members of the family will be recorded as probable cases. “
This means that the infected family member from Italy is “effectively now the first case that we are aware of in New Zealand”, as he reported having symptoms on 21 February. Previously, our first case was reported on February 28.
“Consequently, the other domestic cases would represent the first locally acquired cases of COVID-19 in New Zealand, given the onset of symptoms as of February 29 for the confirmed case. The investigation will continue.”
As part of the ministry’s investigation, the man’s close contacts during his recent mild illness have been tested as a precaution. But they have returned negative evidence.
The three new cases are community cases. They are a family group “linked to a chartered flight from Christchurch to Auckland” and have been isolated for the past three days.
The Health Ministry also provided an update on the case that left the Christchurch-administered isolation and later tested positive for COVID-19 after returning to Auckland.
The man was on a chartered flight between the two cities and the ministry says all 86 people on the flight have been contacted. They are in the process of being tested or have already been tested. Sixty-three have tested negative.
“By tracing the history of this man and how he became infected, we can update that one of the two remaining cases from his previous Delhi-Fiji flight has now been sequenced and shown to be a close match. The second result is still pending.” , the ministry said.
“We are continuing to investigate how his infection could have occurred.”
Thirty-seven people are now isolated from the community at the Auckland quarantine facility. This includes 17 people who have tested positive for COVID-19 and their household contacts.
Three people are hospitalized, one in Auckland City, Middlemore and North Shore Hospitals. All three are isolated in the general room.
Since August 11, 4,014 close contacts have been identified, of which 4006 have been contacted and are self-isolating or have completed their period of isolation. The rest are being contacted.
With Wednesday’s new cases and three recovered cases, our total active cases is 62. Twenty-eight of these are imported cases in managed isolation or quarantine facilities and 34 are community aces. New Zealand has recorded 1,468 confirmed cases of COVID-19.
On Tuesday, the labs processed 6,938 tests, bringing our grand total to 924,637.
There are now 2,255,500 registered users on the NZ COVID Tracer app. It has logged a total of 72,556,153 poster scans and users have created 3,203,810 manual journal entries.
