Live updates for day nine of the Level 4 lockdown have now concluded, check the 1 NEWS site for the latest information about the New Zealand community outbreak .
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
- Thursday's 68 cases take the total number of cases in the Delta community outbreak to 277. The number of contacts is 24,402.
- Locations of interest have climbed to over 500. There are locations in Auckland, the Coromandel, the central North Island and Wellington. The list is being updated every two hours.
- New Zealand remains at Alert Level 4 for another two days, with settings to be reviewed on Friday. Auckland's lockdown is in place until midnight Tuesday, with a review set for Monday.
The Director-General of Health is hoping to see numbers of Covid-19 cases levelling off in the coming days. (Source: Other)
LIVE UPDATES
8.10 pm - New locations of interest have been added to the Ministry of Health's website, including another school.
Staff and students who attended Waimahia Intermediate in Clendon Park on August 16 have been asked to self isolate for 14 days.
7.05 pm - A staff member at a retirement home in Warkworth, near Auckland, has tested positive for Covid-19.
Residents and their families were notified on Thursday by CHT Amberlea that a staff member, who was a household contact of a case, has now tested positive.
The worker, along with other staff who worked closely with the infected staff member, are now self-isolating and won't return to work until they've been cleared by health officials, Carriann Hall, CHT Healthcare Trust chief executive said.
Residents who are deemed close contacts are being contacted and will go into a self-isolation as a precautionary measure.
6.20pm - A joint survey sent to 2000 companies by the Northern Chambers of Commerce has found 64 per cent of businesses were confident of surviving the latest lockdown but there are still risks - especially for those in tourism, hospitality and retail.
Auckland Chamber CEO, Michael Barnett said that 75 per cent of Auckland enterprises were operating – more than the other regions – with 80 per cent confident they would be able to go the distance.
But 95 per cent of those respondents also said they would be claiming the wage subsidy and other support to hold staff and mitigate some of the recurrent costs.
“Small and medium businesses are not giving up but struggling with the uncertain environment, and have shown every intent to keep on operating,” Barnett said.
“But the longer we remain in level 4 the greater the damage to this sector.”
5.45pm - MIQ has told 1 NEWS it's are exploring options to increase its overall capacity to quarantine community cases in Auckland and elsewhere.
“One of the key areas of focus for MIQ since this latest outbreak began was on how to best configure our facilities in order to meet demand from international returnees and community cases and close contacts,” says Joint Head of MIQ, Brigadier Rose King.
“As part of this planning, the Grand Mercure in Wellington has become a quarantine-only facility and the Bay Plaza Wellington is now used exclusively for close contacts of community cases who are required to isolate.
“Currently, the Holiday Inn Auckland Airport is being used as an isolation facility for close community cases and symptomatic border cases, while Jet Park Quarantine Facility in Auckland continues to be used for positive community cases and positive border cases."
Contingency planning is also well underway to transition the Holiday Inn managed isolation facility to a dual facility which, if necessary, can make 68 of its 247 isolation rooms available for quarantine purposes, King added.
5.16 pm - A Farro Fresh supermarket in Grey Lynn, a Unichem pharmacy in Otara, The Cosemtic Clinic in West City mall and a Sunday school at the Church of Christ New Zealand in Mt Roskill are among the new locations of interest added.
Several central city bus routes have also joined the list, most notably the Northern Express NX1 and NX2 routes.
More information about the latest locations can be found through the Ministry of Health's website .
4.15pm - Police say since Alert Level 4 came into place, 69 people have been charged with a total of 75 offences nationwide since 4.00pm Wednesday.
"These arrests are primarily the result of protest activity in the first few days of Alert Level 4 and other intentional behaviour in breach of the restrictions," said Police Commissioner Andrew Coster in a statement.
"Of the 75 charges filed, 47 are for Failing to Comply with Order (Covid-19), 16 for Failure to Comply with Direction/Prohibition/Restriction, 10 for Health Act Breaches, and two for Assaults/Threatens/Hinders/Obstructs Enforcement Officer.
In the same time period, 190 formal warnings were issued.
3.30pm - The Ministry of Health has launched the Post Vaccine Symptom Check, a mobile-based survey that will help monitor reactions to the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in New Zealand, Covid-19 vaccination programme GM Post Event, Dr Tim Hanlon says.
“New Zealand already has a reporting system in place for monitoring reactions to any vaccine or medicine, which can be submitted by both patients and their healthcare professionals through the Centre for Adverse Reactions Monitoring (CARM).
“The Post Vaccine Symptom Check is another tool in our kete. It’s a proactive way to increase our data collection about reactions to the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine," the ministry said in a press release.
“Up to 10 percent of New Zealanders who receive a dose of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine will be randomly selected to participate in the survey.
“A text message will be sent from the Ministry of Health six days after each dose of the vaccine and 43 days after the second dose, to ask whether you had any reactions to the vaccine. The first texts will be sent in the coming days.
3.10pm - Jacinda Ardern says that of the more than 500 locations of interest on the Ministry of Health’s website, Covid-19 transmission happened at 13 of them.
“While we do have a large number of locations of interest, and we do want all of those individuals who were connected to those locations of interest to follow the health advice, at this stage, roughly 13 have had cases transmitted at those locations of interest,” Ardern said.
She said other “patterns” were also emerging that showed the Alert Level 4 lockdowns were working.
1.43pm - The Ministry has not confirmed that Countdown Westgate has a Covid-positive staff member. However, Ardern says the worker was infected through being part of a cluster rather than being infected "at their place of work". The supermarket was listed as a new location of interest today and the infected person was there for eight hours during one of the days listed.
1.42pm - Ardern says variants survive in countries where there are low levels of vaccinations, again reinforcing that vaccinating the country is important. She said the "jury is still out" on booster shots.
1.33pm - The Prime Minister says there are a high number of households involved in the outbreak which may mean that case numbers continue to be high in the meantime.
As the outbreak grows, the number of contacts continues to soar with 2442 identified as of 8am Thursday, 65 per cent have been contacted and are self-isolating.
McElnay said roughly 71 per cent of contacts have been tested for the virus, "reflecting the high level of testing".
1.27pm - Ardern says she wants "the highest number of vaccinations possible". She says they will form a "barricade" for those who are unable to be vaccinated.
Ardern says despite the fact people who are vaccinated can pass on the virus, "you are not seeing people incredibly unwell". McElnay says overseas data shows transmission once vaccinated is dramatically slowed.
1.22pm - Ardern says the elimination strategy is still New Zealand's goal - she says Delta has changed the game, and "we have changed the game plan" and says today's numbers are not unexpected.
She says while there were more than 60 cases recorded on Wednesday, only three new reported exposure events have been identified.
"This tell us that people are following level 4."
1.18pm - The number of subclusters remains at six with the Birkdale Social Network cluster at 41 and the Mangere church cluster at 117 cases. The number of locations of interest continue to grow with new sites added today, taking the total number to 495.
1.07pm - Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Director of Public Health Dr Caroline McElnay are providing an update on numbers. Today there are 68 new cases of Covid in the community bringing the total number in the outbreak to 277. There are now 263 cases in Auckland and 14 in Wellington. One case has been recorded in MIQ.
There are two new cases in Wellington and the remainder are in Auckland. A total of 24,402 individual contacts have now been formally identified - 65 per cent have been followed up by contact tracers.
A record 87,772 vaccines were administered yesterday, 3 million doses have been administered since the beginning of the campaign. Yesterday 270,000 bookings were made on the Book My Vaccine website.
12.50pm - The NRHCC has told 1 NEWS it has had 10,000 people through the Auckland Airport Park and Ride since Sunday. It vaccinated 4000 people on Wednesday, while the new Trust Arena drive-thru vaccinated 1000 people on Wednesday.
12.27pm - The Warehouse West City is the latest location of interest .
The date and time concerned is Friday, August 13, from 6.45pm til 8.30pm.
Meanwhile, new exposure dates and times have been added for about six other locations.
12.13pm - Countdown's Kiri Hannifin has said in a statement more than 2100 staff are isolating across the country due to the outbreak.
Nineteen of its stores are considered locations of interest, while eight stores are temporarily closed.
11.41am - About 170 people so far have been tested at the testing station for Assembly of God churchgoers.
11.08am - According to the Prime Minister's Office, a testing station specifically for Assembly of God congregations has been set up and is being run by South Seas Healthcare at the Manukau Magpies Rugby League & Sports Club, 48 Bader Drive, Māngere, Auckland.
10.46am - The number of locations of interest has climbed to 494.
It includes a rugby game at De La Salle College in Māngere held on Saturday, August 14, from 9am til noon.
City Fitness Wairau is also on the list of exposure sites, along with the University of Auckland's Whitaker Hall.
New exposure dates and times have also been added for Countdown Westgate Shopping Centre for August 19 and 21, which is after lockdown.
10am - Returning to Covid-19 modeller Shaun Hendy: He also told Breakfast earlier for alert levels to fall, case numbers had to come down.
Due to lockdown, he said he expected case numbers to start to become steady in the next few days, and then decrease.
9.11am - Finance Minister Grant Robertson told Breakfast earlier "Employment law still applies even though we're in Covid".
He encouraged anyone having issues with getting financial support to contact the Ministry of Social Devlopment (MSD) on 0800 559 009.
Robertson's advice for casual workers was as follows: "First thing, talk to your employer. If you have been working, even only for a brief period of time, you are eligible for them to apply on your behalf. That’s step one. If for whatever reason your employer won’t do that, or you genuinely only just started the job moments ago before lockdown, then you do need to get directly in contact with the Ministry of Social Development."
For employers telling staff to take annual leave, he said this: "They can't, it's that simple."
Robertson reminded people they need to be given 14 days notice by employers before they can be required to take annual leave.
9am - A new exposure date and time have been added for earlier locations of interest McAuley High School Ōtāhuhu and Manukau Super Strike Bowling.
Meanwhile, Gangnam Style Korean BBQ Buffet in Manukau has been added to the list.
People can check the Ministry of Health's dedicated page for the date and times concerned.
7.26am - Like Bloomfield, Covid-19 modeller Shaun Hendy told Breakfast the country may see a high number of cases again Thursday.
Case numbers were expected to plateau soon and then drop as the effects of lockdown kicked in, he added.
A good sign was the country was not seeing "daily doubling" of cases, which was common with the Delta variant.
Auckland University’s Shaun Hendy says the increased infectiousness of the Delta variant is evident. (Source: Other)
Hendy said it was "unlucky" there had been a super spreader event in the outbreak and remarked there had been an "element" and "dash" of unluckiness this time around.
Like Bloomfield again, Hendy thought there may a split in alert levels in the North and South islands.
He felt Auckland was looking at "multiple weeks" in lockdown, while the situation was more "optimistic" for the rest of New Zealand.
7.20am - Another facility with about 200 beds is being stood up for those who test positive, Bloomfield said, and there is availability in Wellington and Christchurch.
7.18am - Bloomfield added 62 new cases Wednesday was high, but said it is expected the growth will level out from Friday due to lockdown.
7.13am - Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield says there could be another large number of cases Thursday.
6.43am - The Ministry of Health has confirmed there may have been a second vaccine mistake , this time in Christchurch.
On Thursday it was revealed five people in Auckland may have been injected with saline solution, rather than the vaccine, back in July.
The Covid-19 vaccination programme's national director Jo Gibbs said there was also an incident at the Wigram vaccination clinic in Christchurch where vaccine stock did not match the number of doses administered.
6.05am - For some contacts identified earlier on in the outbreak, Thursday marks their day 12 tests.
6am - A bit of a recap of Wednesday's developments: Sixty-two community cases were announced, but Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said although this was a steady growth, it was "not exponential" .
The number of locations of interest is approaching 500 and NCEA exams have been pushed back two weeks and will now begin on November 22.
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