There is one new case of COVID-19 to report in New Zealand – the worker at the Auckland quarantine facility announced by the Ministry on Friday night.
In addition to the new case, there is one historical case being added to New Zealand’s total case numbers.
The historical case is a recent returnee who arrived in New Zealand on 5 October from London via Singapore. Upon arrival at their managed isolation facility they alerted staff to their previous positive test which was confirmed in London on 19 September. They were tested again and returned a positive result on 5 October, with a high CT value indicating an old infection, consistent with this earlier positive result. We are awaiting confirmation that the case has been recorded in the United Kingdom totals, and until then are classifying it as a historical case which will be reported in our case numbers.
Three previously reported cases are now considered to have recovered, bringing the total number of active cases to 43.
Our total number of confirmed cases is now 1,620.
Yesterday our laboratories completed 5,834 tests for COVID-19, bringing the total number of tests completed to date to 1,132,820.
Quarantine worker case in Auckland
Upon receiving the positive result from the worker in the Auckland quarantine facility, our systems quickly responded to ensure the risk of the virus spreading was contained.
This person is now in isolation at the quarantine facility.
We have identified 25 close contacts of the worker, and they have all been contacted, are isolated, and are being tested. To date, six have returned a negative test result and the remaining are pending.
As in other cases, this person quickly got tested after developing symptoms, which has allowed us to act quickly to stop the spread of the virus.
A review of the movements of the case and their contacts is underway – the case has provided a very detailed account of their movements which has informed a rapid contact tracing response.
The two premises visited by the worker during their infectious period closed for a deep clean, and we thank them for their cooperation in ensuring the public are protected from this virus.
Less than 20 people received an alert from NZ COVID Tracer notifying them that they had scanned in to the business at the same time as the person who has later tested positive for COVID-19.
