The follow-up tests for two close contacts of an Australian traveller with Covid-19 have come back negative.
The Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said it was “encouraging” that the pair from Palmerston North, who spent time with the man with Covid-19 in Wellington last weekend had tested negative.
“But, as we have seen from this virus, both here previously and not even with the Delta variant, if we think back to Papatoetoe High School, one student who wasn’t a close contact in that whole school did return a positive test,” he added.
That meant the country wasn’t yet “out of the woods”, Bloomfield said.
“We need to maintain our current approach of being cautious.”
Two other close contacts of the traveller, from Tauranga, also returned negative tests.
Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins echoed Bloomfield’s sentiments. Hipkins was also “encouraged” to see there were no new Covid-19 cases in the community today , but said it was still early days.
Results from wastewater testing for the virus from Tuesday also came back negative. This was from sites around Wellington, the Hutt Valley and Porirua.
Hipkins said 10,749 tests were processed yesterday, 3713 of which had been taken in Wellington. A further 4500 were expected to be carried out today.
Hipkins wouldn’t pre-empt whether Cabinet would keep the Wellington region at Alert Level 2 beyond Sunday, or move it back to Alert Level 1.
He said Cabinet would decide once it had more information, and it would continue reviewing whether the alert level restrictions needed to be tweaked before then.
As of 8am this morning, 1752 people had been identified as contacts of the Australian man and were in the country's national contact tracing database.
Of these 1752 people, 550 were required to isolate for 14 days and test negative for the virus twice. The rest needed a negative test on day five and to monitor themselves for any symptoms.
Of the 1752 people identified so far, Bloomfield added 532 had returned a negative test result, eight had returned overseas and 1212 were waiting for their results.
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