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The Ministry of Health is providing a Covid-19 update today at 1 pm
Last night, ministry officials confirmed they were investigating a possible Covid-19 case in Canterbury.
The person is in controlled isolation. However, it is not clear if they have come from abroad or have been in the community.
Auckland is at alert level 2.5, while the rest of the country is at level 2 as of 11:59 pm on September 16, despite all current cases being in Auckland or linked to the 155-person group from Auckland.
Part of the government’s justification for keeping the rest of the country at level 2 is to provide some protections (physical distancing and a limit of 100 people in meetings) while people can travel in and out of Auckland.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said that was evident with the recent cases in Tokoroa, where the possible spread of the virus could have been worse if that part of the country had been at alert level 1.
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Yesterday there were two new cases in the community, both epidemiologically linked to the Auckland cluster.
“One case has been linked as a close contact with the Americold household subgroup and the other is a close contact of a confirmed case linked to the Mt Roskill Evangelical Church subgroup,” the ministry said yesterday.
There was also a new positive case in managed isolation.
Two people with Covid-19 were in the hospital yesterday, one in the intensive care unit at Waikato Hospital and the other in a ward at North Shore Hospital.
The death toll from Covid-19 reached 24 on Friday, with the deaths of a man in his 50s and the former Prime Minister of the Cook Islands, Dr. Joe Williams, 85.
The deaths were a “stark and sad reminder of how deadly this virus is and can be,” Ardern said.
Williams’ death at Auckland City Hospital marked a double tragedy for his family, after the brother of the respected Mt Wellington physician, Tuaine Williams, 92, died peacefully the day before at Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane.
Williams was a former Cook Islands health minister who then led the country for four months in 1999. He was also a candidate for Prime Minister of New Zealand in 2005 and yesterday received honors from Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters as well as the Director General for Health Ashley Bloomfield and Finance. Minister Grant Robertson.
Williams was admitted to hospital on August 13 and is believed to have been in close contact with someone related to the August Auckland group.
That group, which caused Auckland to return to the Level 3 lockdown for nearly three weeks, was first detected on August 11 in a family member of a worker at Americold Coolstore, which is close to Williams’ practice in Mt Wellington.
