The number of new community cases of Covid-19 connected to the Delta outbreak has dropped to 49 today.
Photo: Pool / 2021 Getty Images
There were also four new cases in managed isolation.
All of the new community cases are in Auckland.
There are 42 cases in hospital. Six are in ICU and three are being ventilated. The youngest person in ICU is 18.
The Ministry of Health reported 75 new cases of Covid-19 in the community yesterday.
Speaking at today's government briefing, Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said the drop was encouraging.
This brings the total number of active cases in the outbreak to 725, with 709 in Auckland, 16 in Wellington. Eleven people are now recovered.
Dr Bloomfield said 37,359 individual contacts had been identified and were in the contact tracing system, with 81 percent of them having direct contact with the team and self isolating.
Bloomfield said analysis of yesterday's cases showed 85 percent were contacts of known cases and 56 percent were household contacts already isolating.
About 36 percent of yesterday's cases were considered to be infectious in the community, higher than the 26 percent reported the previous day.
There were 17,683 tests processed nationally yesterday, with 6700 swabs taken across Auckland.
"We need to have higher levels of testing across Tamaki Makaurau to give us confidence that we have the outbreak under control. This is absolutely essential for our understanding of whether the outbreak is under control and therefore having Auckland at alert level 4 for the shortest time possible."
He said about 75 percent of cases in the outbreak have been genomically sequenced and there are no unexpected wastewater results to report.
Dr Bloomfield also provided an update on the positive case in the worker at the Spring Hill Corrections facility. Negative results have been received from the person since they tested positive. All inmates and co-workers so far have tested negative.
There was also a test "under investigation" yesterday in MidCentral DHB region, which has since been determined to be a historical case.
Dr Bloomfield said it was vital people with any symptoms at all should not go to work.
Essential workers who are regularly crossing the Auckland boundary are being asked to get tested in the next three or four days even if they have no symptoms.
"We are looking at how to put in place a system to check that these commuting essential workers are being regularly tested ... we will also be putting in place a system for regular surveillance testing at the moment of asymptomatic essential workers."
As of 8am there were 384 applications for personal travel in exceptional circumstances, he says, but about 95 percent of those that were eligible were declined.
"A tight boundary around our alert level 4 area is essential to stop the virus from spreading."
He said very few of the cases give rise to the need for essential travel.
