There are 21 new Covid-19 community cases in New Zealand today, bringing the total in this outbreak to 51.
Of today's new cases, 18 are in Auckland and three are in Wellington. One of the new cases was reported yesterday.
"We have always said cases will rise before they fall and based on the experience of overseas countries we do expect cases to continue to rise through to next week before they start coming away," Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said.
She gave today's update alongside Director of Public Health Dr Caroline McElnay.
McElnay said 21 of the total cases have now been linked to the Auckland outbreak, while the remaining 30 are under investigation.
"Public health staff are rapidly interviewing cases to establish how the new cases were infected and to determine further details of their movements and we will continue to release that information as it becomes available," McElnay said.
"On whole gnome sequencing, ESR continues to run sequencing from samples taken from the new cases. They've completed sequencing for 29 of those cases, including the three Wellington cases reported yesterday, and they are all genomically linked to the Auckland cluster."
All of today's new cases have been moved to managed isolation.
In addition, there were three new Covid-19 cases found at the border.
It takes the number of people of infected people in this outbreak past 50. (Source: Other)
Meanwhile, Covid-19 has been detected in wastewater testing in Warkworth, north of Auckland, on Tuesday.
McElnay asked anyone in Warkworth who had been in a location of interest or was symptomatic to get tested for Covid-19.
The virus continues to be detected across the Auckland region.
Click here for the latest contract tracing locations of interest from the Ministry of Health.
Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson this morning defended the slow pace at which locations of interest are made public in Wellington saying they wanted to insure information was accurate.
Addressing the same concerns, McElnay too said contact tracers were working "around the clock" in a "fast moving situation" to get information out there as fast as possible.
She said contact tracers were also dealing with people who have just been confirmed with the virus and were often stressed and under pressure trying to recall where they had been.
"The number of contacts has increased significantly. This is something that we expected as we identify more contacts and test in large numbers," McElnay said.
"As at 10 o'clock this morning, 5065 individual contacts had been identified. This number will increase throughout the day as records are fully processed and we expect to have another 5000 contacts by the end of today."
The majority of those contacts are in the Auckland and Waikato regions, with a small number throughout the rest of the country, including both the North and South Island.
Ardern said greater confidence in the outbreak of the Delta variant linked to a recent returnee from Sydney means a decision has been made to removed locations of interest that pre-date August 7 - the date they arrived in New Zealand.
The Government announced Friday that New Zealand would remain at Alert Level 4 until 11.59pm Tuesday.
"No one wants and extended lockdown and no one wants to see that rate of transmission [825 new Covid-19 cases in NSW] so the number one thing everyone can do right now is reduce down your contacts and ensure you stick to your bubble."
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