Jacinda Ardern said today that analysing some individual cases of Covid-19 for potential community transmission requires “forensic interviews”.
Her comments come following the case of a young person in Whanganui testing positive without a clear link to the source of the infection.
The person in their 20s has not travelled overseas and does not have any known links to the region's other seven cases, who have all recovered, RNZ reported today.
Medical Officer of Health Dr Patrick O'Connor said in a statement that the person's household members have been tested.
Ms Ardern also shed light on the process today.
“As we have talked about in these last few weeks, we have been getting down to analysing individual cases to see what they tell us about potential community transmission - and when we see that, doing follow-up to then test to see if there is anything wider happening within those communities.
New Zealand now has 1431 confirmed and probable Covid-19 cases. (Source: Other)
“But what I would say is this demonstrates also the job our contact tracers have. They have to go in and conduct sometimes forensic interviews to try and ascertain what exactly has happened with a case that is a little bit more difficult to build a picture,” she said.
With the Government set to decide if New Zealand will stay or leave Alert Level 4 tomorrow, Ms Ardern says it gives Kiwis a sense of what Cabinet will need to weigh up in order to make a decision.
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