There are no new cases of Covid-19 to report in New Zealand today.
Missed the briefing watch it back here:
There has now only been three new cases in the past 15 days.
Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said the total number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 remains at 1504.
The total number of recovered cases is 1461 with only 22 active cases still in New Zealand, Dr Bloomfield said.
There are no new deaths to report either and one person remains in Middlemore Hospital.
There were 1841 tests processed yesterday, taking the total number of tests to 263,156 so far.
Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield says New Zealand's case numbers are low and recovery rates high which meant the government was able to increase the size limit for gatherings from 10 to 100 people, which will take place from midday this Friday.
Community sport will be able to go ahead with the new rules allowing, however large sporting events like Super Rugby won't be able to have fans in the stands until level 1 at the earliest.
Photo: RNZ
Contact tracing app
Bloomfield is confident contact tracing is ready, if needed, once gatherings of 100 people are allowed from Friday.
He told Morning Report today tracing that number of people could be done "very quickly".
Bloomfield said data from mid April to mid May showed 82 percent of people could be contact traced within two days.
During his update this afternoon, Dr Bloomfield said 405,000 people had registerered for the NZ Covid Tracer app, an increase of 25,000 on the previous day.
Covid-19 vaccines
Dr Bloomfield said he had seen reports of a vaccine possibly being available in September.
He said while he would welcome that, he did not believe that was a realistic time frame given development, testing and manufacturing.
He believes it will take longer than that and said around 100 different vaccines were being developed worldwide and New Zealand is taking part in that development.
Dr Bloomfield said he thought it would take between 12-18 months for a vaccine to be available for the public.
Read more about the Covid-19 coronavirus:
- See all RNZ Covid-19 news
- Covid-19 symptoms: What they are and how they make you feel
- Touching your Face: Why do we do it and how to stop
- Scientific hand-washing advice to avoid infection
- Your Covid-19 questions answered - from health and employment to managing anxiety
- A timeline: How the coronavirus started, spread and stalled life in New Zealand
- Coronavirus: A glossary of terms
- The Coronavirus Podcast
