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New Zealand’s coronavirus case count has surpassed 1,400, as 14 more people have tested positive for the virus.
Five of the latest Covid-19 infections, announced Tuesday, occurred in the community, while nine were found in controlled isolation or quarantine (MIQ) facilities.
All community cases have been epidemiologically linked to the largest conglomerate in New Zealand.
Abigail Dougherty / Stuff
People are tested for Covid-19 at a pop-up testing station at Randwick Park School in Manurewa, Auckland. (File photo)
Two of the people in the community who tested positive in the past 24 hours are household contacts of previously reported cases. The remaining three are in a household linked to an existing case.
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One hundred and twenty-three people linked to the group have been transferred to the Jet Park quarantine facility in Auckland, 79 of them tested positive. The rest are your household contacts.
Ten people with the virus are hospitalized: two in Auckland City, three in Middlemore, three in the North Shore and two in Waikato.
One person at Middlemore and another at Waikato Hospital are in intensive care. The others are in a room.
John Sefton / Press room
More than 100 people connected to New Zealand’s largest group have been quarantined at the Jet Park hotel in south Auckland.
Five of the nine cases at MIQ facilities are in Christchurch, three in Auckland and the ninth in Wellington.
The Health Ministry said in a statement that they were all under “strict quarantine arrangements.”
The new “imported” cases detected in Christchurch included a man in his 20s, a woman in his 30s, two women in his 20s and a man in his 40s, who arrived on the same flight from India via from Fiji on August 27.
In Auckland, two women, one in her 20s and one in her 30s, who traveled from India on August 23 tested positive, as well as a 50-year-old woman who arrived on August 26 from Qatar.
The case in Wellington, a man in his 50s who returned from the United States on August 18, tested positive on day 12 of his stay in isolation.
Since August 11, contact tracing teams have identified 2,743 close case contacts, of which 2,676 have been contacted and are in isolation.
Those figures include 51 close contacts of a Tokoroa healthcare professional who contracted Covid-19.
Of those people, 48 have been contacted, isolated and are being examined. They have had a negative result or are waiting for a test.
Housing Minister Megan Woods said that between Aug. 21 and Aug. 25, 97 percent of MIQ facility staff had been screened. They all had a negative result.
3% of the staff who did not undergo the test were on leave or did not have a shift during that period.
The vast majority of returnees, 95%, were tested on the third day of their mandatory two weeks in controlled isolation, and 97% were tested on day 12.
ROBERT KITCHEN / Things
Cabinet Minister Megan Woods, pictured with Air Commodore Darryn Webb, said testing rates at MIQ facilities are high, despite some media reports suggesting otherwise.
To exit MIQ without a negative test on the 12th, returnees must obtain a waiver from Air Commodore Darryn Webb or his assistant.
Anyone without a waiver who refuses a test on the 12th would have to spend another two weeks in controlled isolation. Woods said that most of these people eventually agreed to get tested.
On Monday, labs processed 8,599 coronavirus tests across the country.
In total, 766,626 tests have been conducted during the pandemic.
David White / Stuff
A woman wears a face mask on a bus in Auckland’s financial district after a face covering was made mandatory on public transport on Monday.
The total number of confirmed cases is now 1401, of which 132 are “active.”
Thirteen people from the community were confirmed to have recovered on Tuesday.
New Zealand’s Covid Tracer app now has two million registered users, who have collectively scanned an average of 1.7 million QR codes per day over the past week.
