Based on the country’s experience with the Delta variant, authorities are expecting about 50 more “very close contacts” of known cases to test positive for Covid-19 in the coming days.
“Across the system, we have about 350 ‘very close’ contacts who are still in their 14-day isolation period,” the Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said on Sunday.
“Most” of these people have already returned at least one negative Covid-19 test, Bloomfield said.
However, based on previous evidence, Bloomfield said about 16 per cent of “very close contacts” end up contracting the virus.
So, that means about 50 people are expected to test positive for Covid-19 during their routine day-12 tests, he said.
Bloomfield also provided a further update about current clusters.
There remain three main clusters of considerable size.
They are the Māngere church group, with 379 cases related to it, secondary spread in the community from that church, made up of 164 cases, and the Birkdale social network cluster, which has 76 cases.
“These three sub-clusters are part of 16 subclusters or settings of interest which we are using to aid our tracking of the outbreak,” Bloomfield said.
Of the 16 subclusters, seven are considered “contained”, Bloomfield said.
Meanwhile, six of the 16 subclusters are only registering cases among household members or close contacts of known cases who were isolating.
The remaining three subclusters are being “intensively followed up” by officials because there is a concern there is Covid-19 spread beyond households, Bloomfield said.
He said there was no evidence of widespread community transmission of the virus in Auckland.
“Yes, we have seen a few cases over the past week or so which have taken us a bit of time to link. Therefore, we are assuming there may be other undetected cases,” Bloomfield said.
That was why there had been “very targeted testing” in some communities in Auckland of both symptomatic and asymptomatic people, he said.
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