The government has urged continued caution as Auckland faces into the weekend, with new Community Covid-19 numbers today remaining static.
Photo: RNZ
The Health Ministry announced 19 new cases in Auckland, with one unlinked, bringing the number of unlinked cases over the past 14 days to eight.
But Director of Public Health Dr Caroline McElnay said today the city's five sub-clusters are believed to be contained. There are 23 patients in hospital, with four patients in ICU.
This afternoon Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson said the low number of unlinked cases was encouraging, but there was no room for complacency.
"One of the things I'm urging people in Auckland this weekend to do is get tested," he said.
"We saw 19,000 tests across New Zealand and that's an excellent number, and we want to keep that level of testing up over the weekend."
Photo: Pool / Stuff / Robert Kitchin
He said getting the level of testing needed to gain an accurate picture on the outbreak was essential for Cabinet to make its a decision on changing alert-level settings on Monday.
Middlemore cases
It transpired this morning that Auckland's Middlemore Hospital dealt with six Covid-19-positive patients on Wednesday night, including two who tested positive after turning up at the emergency department for non-Covid-19 issues.
There were 45 new community cases announced in Auckland that day.
Middlemore Hospital ED. Photo: Stephen Forbes / Stuff / LDR
One of the emergency department cases was moved to an isolation ward, before being moved to a quarantine facility. The other who discharged themselves is being managed by the Auckland Regional Public Health Service (ARPHS).
Health officials said the patient had not required in-patient treatment and chose to leave before finishing the emergency department process.
Sixty-six other patients have been deemed close contacts.
Preparing for 1000 cases for week.
It was revealed this morning, Auckland Hospital is preparing to deal with an average of six Covid deaths per week next year, even with a 90 percent vaccination rate.
Modelling helping head of the DHBs prepare for border openings and painted a sobering picture of what having Covid permanently in the community will look like.
Under the scenario modellers think is most likely, there would be, on average, more than 1000 community cases a week, 33 hospital admissions and six deaths.
The DHB's director of provider services, Mike Shepherd, said work was already under way to get the hospital ready.
Border stops
Police said, as of 11.59pm yesterday, a total of 391,800 vehicles had now been stopped at the checkpoints on Auckland's northern and southern boundaries, with a total of 6237 vehicles having been turned around.
Police processed 23,721 vehicles at the checkpoints yesterday with 198 of those vehicles turned around.
A total of 29 out of 4765 vehicles were turned away at the northern checkpoints yesterday, while 169 vehicles out of 18,956 were turned around at the southern checkpoints.
Yesterday, 48 heavy vehicles were turned around trying to leave Tāmaki Makaurau.
Testing in suburbs of interest
A south Auckland GP said today better information and more testing options were needed to boost swabbing rates in suburbs of interest.
Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Health authorities want people in Henderson, Papakura, Clover Park, Māngere, Favona, Manurewa and Mount Wellington to get tested, whether they had symptoms or not.
Dr Api Talemaitoga says some of the patients at his clinic were asking to be tested when they were coming in for something else. But he said more needed to be done to get the message out.
Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio said there were hard-to-reach pockets of people in Auckland who had never engaged with the health system.
