There are five new close or close plus contacts of the Auckland Airport worker who tested positive for Covid-19 on Tuesday, the Ministry of Health says.
It brings the total from 31 yesterday to 36 today.
The worker cleaned high-risk planes arriving from overseas, including the aircraft that an infected passenger travelled on.
The Ministry says the number of the man's contacts has since increased as he worked three shifts during their infectious period with a number of colleagues.
All 36 close contacts of this case have been contacted and are self-isolating.
Of those 36 close contacts, 21 have returned negative tests to date with results still to come on the remainder.
Public health officials are in daily communication with all contacts to monitor their health and confirm any upcoming testing dates.
Genomic sequencing released earlier this week identified the worker's infection as the highly infectious UK variant. It's linked to a passenger who arrived in New Zealand on April 10.
Also today the Ministry announced there are no new cases of Covid-19 in the community in New Zealand and no new cases in managed isolation and quarantine.
It brings the total number of active cases in the country to 32, after 48 previously reported cases recovered.
The large number of recovered cases today relates to several large groups of recovered returnees being released from the Auckland quarantine facility over the past week, including some of the 64 cases in managed isolation reported during the week ending April 11, the ministry said.
New Zealand's total number of confirmed cases is now 2,244.
In addition, the NZ Covid Tracer app now has 2,793,846 registered users. Poster scans have reached 254,032,443 and users have created 9,502,722 manual diary entries. There have been 808,611 scans in the last 24 hours to midday yesterday.
“Scanning in has made it so much easier for contact tracing staff to very quickly trace the movements of close and casual plus contacts. It’s a critical element of New Zealand’s response to and fight against Covid-19,” the Health Ministry said.
“We recommend people continue to scan NZ Covid Tracer app. The more we all scan, the safer we’ll all be. The data is stored on your phone until you choose to share it.’
The total number of tests processed by laboratories to date is 1,992,707.
Yesterday, 4,749 tests were processed. The seven-day rolling average up to yesterday is 4,103 tests processed.
Testing around Auckland will continue over the long weekend in Auckland with four community testing centres at Northcote, Henderson, Balmoral and Wiri open tomorrow, the Health Ministry said.
The Balmoral community testing centre will also be open on Sunday and Monday.
Testing is also available at after-hours general practices and urgent care clinics over the long weekend.
The Ministry’s next update is planned for 1pm on Anzac Day – Sunday, April 25.
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