New Zealand's first community case since February was found yesterday, here are the main developments of the Delta outbreak in Auckland as of Wednesday afternoon.
Follow 1 NEWS' live updates as New Zealand enters day one of Alert Level 4.
Wednesday afternoon:
Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins says three additional cases had been confirmed since the briefing, taking the total number to 10.
Details of the three new cases, who are all in Auckland, are as follows:
- A man in his 20s. This man is the partner of a known case who was reported as a positive case this morning.
- A woman in her 60s. Interviews are underway to determine any link to existing cases. This woman has a connection to the border.
- A woman in her 20s. She has a connection with another case reported today.
In addition, two cases announced at 1pm today have now been linked to existing cases.
- A teenage woman who was a close contact of a case reported today.
- A man in his 20s who visited the household where three of the cases reported today reside.
One of those cases is an AUT student who attended a lecture on Tuesday.
"We're seeing more cases coming through, I don't have details of those cases. But yes, I can confirm that we have further positive test results since the press conference today," Hipkins told RNZ earlier.
Hipkins also said it was "almost certain" the 58-year-old man is not the index case connected to the border.
"Almost certain they were given Covid-19 by someone else. What we're trying to do is identify how many steps in that chain of transmission there are before we got to the Devonport case."
Additional locations of interest have also been added in both Auckland and the Coromandel.
Wednesday 1pm briefing:
Two new community cases were announced, bringing the total to seven.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern revealed there had been a number of high-risk events and locations linked to the cases, including Avondale College, a church and the Sky City Casino.
Dr Bloomfield said the cases were young and had been out and about, flagging there will be large numbers of locations of interest.
He signalled two important locations - Auckland Central Church of Christ in Freeman's Bay on Sunday and the other was the SkyCity Casino on Saturday night and the early hours of Sunday morning.
The community cases were genomically linked to the New South Wales outbreak, however the original source of the outbreak has not yet been found.
Dr Ashley Bloomfield said two different modelling exercises suggested the outbreak could rise to between 50 and 120 cases .
Cabinet decided to make mask use in essential services mandatory for all visitors and workers . That included all supermarkets, pharmacies and service stations.
Wednesday morning: As the country woke up locked down, four new Covid-19 community cases were announced just before 9am. One (Case B) was a workmate of Case A. The other three were contacts of Case B – one of those being a fully vaccinated Auckland City Hospital nurse who had been at work over the last few days.
The original Covid-19 community case was confirmed as the Delta variant after genome sequencing.
Explained: What is the Delta variant of Covid-19?
Testing centres were set up across Auckland and in the Coromandel.
The Cook Islands suspended all travel from New Zealand .
Tuesday evening : New Zealand was glued to the press conference held by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Director of Health Ashley Bloomfield, where it was announced the country would go into lockdown at midnight for at least three days, with Auckland and Coromandel for at least seven days.
"Delta has been called a game changer and... it means that we again need to go hard and early to stop the spread," Ardern said.
Read the Alert Level 4 rules here.
Opposition leader Judith Collins supported the move , but said there was a failure around the speed of the vaccination rollout.
The first community case (Case A) was a 58-year-old Auckland man who had travelled to Coromandel for the weekend , it was thought he could be infectious from August 12.
He was not vaccinated but was attempting to book in. His partner, who was fully vaccinated, returned a negative Covid-19 test. It was not confirmed as the Delta variant, but inferred by Jacinda Ardern who said all cases detected in MIQ were of the Delta variant.
The Ministry of Health released a list of locations of interest and the vaccine rollout was put on pause. This pause was described by ACT leader David Seymour as "nonsensical".
Tuesday afternoon: The Ministry of Health confirmed one community case of Covid-19 had been detected in Auckland, with no established link between the border or MIQ at that time.
Covid in New Zealand
The last case of community transmission was the Auckland February cluster. Wellington saw a Covid scare recently, where a Sydney traveller visited for the weekend while positive with Covid-19.
Vaccine rollout
As of August 16, 934,207 people in New Zealand were fully vaccinated. There was 685,736 who had just received one dose of the Pfizer vaccine.
Locations of interest
- There are a number of locations of interest which are continuously being updated on the Ministry of Health's website .
Alert Level 4
Unsure what the rules are at Alert Level 4 ? You can visit the Government's official Covid website for all of the information.
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