Dr Ashley Bloomfield says there is "no guarantee" we won’t see more Covid-19 cases in New Zealand, despite having zero cases for 18 days in a row.
The Director-General of Health echoed a similar warning from the Prime Minister yesterday in this afternoon's press conference.
"I do want to re-iterate the comments made by the Prime Minister yesterday about being prepared for additional cases in the future.
"We know this will happen, it may be that we detect a case at the border and we are making sure we detect those cases whether people have symptoms or not.
"We may even find cases here in our community onshore, it’s not guaranteed there are not cases there and we should be prepared for that, and we are prepared," he said.
His comments come as there was a possible case of Covid-19 detected this morning.
"We did get notified this morning of a possible positive result and because it was a very weak positive it was re-tested and revalidated ... of course that made a few hearts flutter but the re-validation was a negative result which is good."
They were two siblings - one whose test came back negative and the other a "weak positive", then negative.
"What I can say in this case is that the people who were tested did everything right."
Jacinda Ardern stressed the importance of a "sustained effort" as the country moves to Level 1. (Source: Other)
Yesterday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern also gave Kiwis a warning the battle may be won, but not he war against Covid-19.
"We must remain mindful of the global situation and the harsh reality that the virus will be in our world for some time to come," Ms Ardern said.
"We are confident we have eliminated transmission of the virus in New Zealand for now, but elimination is not a point in time - it is a sustained effort.
"We almost certainly will see cases here again, and I do want to say that again - we will almost certainly see cases here again. That is not a sign that we have failed, it is a reality of this virus."
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