Covid 19 Coronavirus: Is the community group growing?

As Auckland descends to Alert Level 2 and a new community group begins to form, we will soon know if this latest outbreak has spread further in the last 24 hours.

The Health Ministry was expected to send its latest update at 1 pm, but no details had been released at 1:15 pm. There is no live press conference today and details will be announced in a press release.

After a series of zero successive cases, three people from the community linked to a charter flight between Christchurch and Auckland for people who left the isolation administered yesterday tested positive for Covid-19.

The Ministry of Health revealed that it was a family group that flew on the September 11 plane after completing their 14-day stay.

Also on the flight was the man who tested positive for Covid-19 over the weekend, whose virus is believed to have had a rare three-week incubation period.

The latest cases were sitting near the infected man.

There were 86 people on the charter flight. So far 63 have tested negative.

Another case of the man’s earlier Delhi-Fiji flight has now been genomically sequenced, and the result is a close match. The case is still being investigated, but it is now believed that he contracted Covid-19 before reaching New Zealand.

There are currently 62 people with Covid in New Zealand. Twenty-eight people are imported cases in quarantine facilities and 34 are community cases.

The Auckland August cluster, which caused the latest regional shutdown, stands at 178 cases to date.

Since August 11, 4,014 people have been identified as close contacts of the cases, of which 4,006 have been contacted and have self-isolated or have completed self-isolation. The remaining eight people are still being tracked.

Meanwhile, health authorities also announced that they have discovered the first real case of Covid-19 in New Zealand and the start of community transmission.

The Health Ministry made the finding after a Waikato man tested a weak positive for a sore throat.

The results of the serological tests indicated an old infection of the virus dating back to February 21.

At the time, a family member was visiting New Zealand from Italy. The entire household fell ill with symptoms consistent with Covid-19, but was not tested at the time because they did not meet strict testing criteria.

The infected family member from Italy was now regarded as the Covid index case that arrived in New Zealand after reporting symptoms on February 21, a week before the first reported case on February 28.

Five other family members who began to become ill within the week have been identified as probable historical cases of the virus and the first locally acquired community transmission.