The Director-General of Health has announced there are two new Covid-19 cases in New Zealand today.
Speaking at today's Government media conference, Dr Ashley Bloomfield also said there has been one death from coronavirus since yesterday's update. The death toll is now 21.
The new Covid-19 cases were made up of one confirmed case and one probable case.
Today's total comes after zero cases in the previous two days.
Dr Bloomfield said the new case belongs to a student from Marist College - New Zealand's second largest cluster with 95 cases to date.
"They had been contacted by Healthline in the first week of April as part of the contact-tracing but were not unwell at that time so they did not progress to testing at that stage," Dr Bloomfield said.
The school is the site of one of New Zealand's biggest coronavirus clusters. (Source: Other)
"But as part of the broarder testing of Marist students and staff as they head back to school, around 250 people have been tested so far and this is the only positive result from that group.
"The student has what we would call a weak positive test and is almost certainly late in the course of an infection."
Dr Bloomfield said the student is "likely" not infectious but they are being treated with caution and will be retested next week.
"I think this case that's been discovered through this testing across the Marist community shows the importance of that sort of testing and I'd encourage others in the Marist community to go and be tested if they haven't yet.
The probable case is linked to the St Margaret's Hospital and Rest Home cluster and was a household contact of a known case. It wasclassified as such as the person reported symptoms but had a negative test result, leaving the Ministry of Health considering the person to have had Covid-19 at some point.
This brings New Zealand's total number of people who have or have had Covid-19, as well as probable cases, to 1488. The number of confirmed cases - which New Zealand gives to the World Health Organisation - is 1138.
One person has died and two new cases have been added today. (Source: Other)
Dr Bloomfield said 88 per cent of all cases have now recovered, although an exact figure was not given. A recovered case means the person is symptom free for at least 48 hours and it has been at least 10 days since they first became ill.
Dr Bloomfield added there are two people in hospitals throughout the country with the virus, none of whom are in intensive care.
There are still 16 significant Covid-19 clusters around the country. A significant cluster is a group of 10 or more people who have or have had the coronavirus. Three have been closed so far.
The Ministry of Health says on its website closed means there is no longer transmission of the virus within, or associated with the cluster after a total of 28 consecutive days – or two incubation periods for the virus – since its most recent onset date of a reported case.
Yesterday, 4772 Covid-19 tests were carried out in New Zealand, bringing the total to 160,700 so far.
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