Two Covid-19 cases linked to Auckland bus trips is giving health officials "pause for thought".
Dr Ashley Bloomfield gave more details of eight new community cases during this afternoon's official Covid-19 briefing.
"One of these had contact with another confirmed case on bus transport.
"Four are household contacts of confirmed cases. One has had contact with a confirmed case at a church. Two are workplace contacts – one of these is the probable case."
When asked if the new case likely caught on public transport means the current cluster is not yet contained, Dr Bloomfield said it gives "pause for thought."
"One of the things that’s is encouraging is the vast majority of the cases we can quite instantly link to existing cases, but certainly these other cases, including the one on the bus, and there are now two linked to the bus give us pause for thought," he said.
Dr Bloomfield went on to say officials have been able to find epidemiological links for nearly every case involved in the cluster.
Yesterday Auckland Regional Public Health Services released a list of bus trips taken by two people who later tested positive for Covid-19.
It is believed a person linked to the current Auckland cluster passed the virus on to another person during a bus trip, who subsequently took other journeys before testing positive themselves.
The details of which can be found in the story linked below:
The Ministry of Health has identified 2300 close contacts of the Auckland cluster, and have contacted 2249 of those who are now self-isolating.
Meanwhile, 151 people linked to the Auckland cluster, made up of 82 confirmed cases and their family members, have moved into quarantine.
There are 10 people in hospital being treated for the virus - three in Auckland City Hospital, four in Middlemore Hospital, two in North Shore Hospital and one in Waikato Hospital. Of those, two are in intensive care at Auckland's Middlemore Hospital.
Today's new cases bring New Zealand's total number of Covid-19 cases to 1332, as well as 351 probable cases.
There are 123 active Covid-19 cases in New Zealand at the moment, of which 19 are of people returning from overseas.
Yesterday, 4589 Covid-19 tests were carried out in New Zealand, bringing the total number since the pandemic began to 697,070. In the past week there has been almost 100,000 tests for the virus carried out.
The Government's Covid-19 Tracer app now has 1.77 million registered users - about 43 per cent of New Zealand's population over 15-years-old.
Dr Bloomfield confirmed the new cases in today's 1pm press conference as the country awaits an announcement on alert levels.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will announce at 3pm if or when Auckland will move out of Alert Level 3 and whether or not the rest of the nation will stay at Level 2.
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