Covid 19 Coronavirus: Six New Cases in Isolation Managed As Vaccine Approval Approaches

New Zealand has six new cases of coronavirus in isolation administered today.

Today’s results, announced by the Health Ministry this afternoon, are the first since new pre-flight test rules were implemented for travelers to New Zealand.

The Health Ministry says one of the cases is classified as historical and non-infectious.

The latest travelers to test positive include a traveler from South Africa who tested positive on the 24th.

The infected travelers came from South Africa, Great Britain, Zimbabwe, the United States and Russia.

For the first time since the government introduced a requirement for all New Zealand-bound travelers leaving the United States and the United Kingdom to produce a negative covid test, the count includes flights that have landed since midnight on Friday.

In addition to the pre-fight screening, all travelers arriving in New Zealand, excluding Australia, Antarctica, and some Pacific nations, must also be tested on the first day of arrival and remain in their rooms until the result is known.

The government announced this week that this will be rolled out to all other nations next month.

Yesterday, the government reported that there were 85 active cases in New Zealand and all were in quarantine.

They include people with the highly infectious variants from South Africa and the UK.

This morning, Dr. Ashley Bloomfield told Mike Hosking of Newstalk ZB that Medsafe was not far from finalizing the official process to ensure the first tranche of the vaccine was safe for New Zealanders.

“We are completely in tune with Australia, we have our strong approval process and they are on track to give us approval in the next few weeks and then get the vaccine ashore as quickly as possible,” he said.