15 community cases of COVID-19; two border cases in managed isolation

Source: New Zealand Ministry of Health

Cases

• Number of new community cases: 15
• Number of new cases identified at the border: Two
• Location of new cases: Auckland
• Location of community cases (total): Auckland 953 (382 of whom have recovered); Wellington 17 (12 of whom have recovered)
• Number of community cases (total): 970 (in current community outbreak)
• Cases infectious in the community: Eight (26%) of yesterday’s cases have exposure events
• Cases in isolation throughout the period they were infectious: 23 (74%) of yesterday’s cases
• Cases epidemiologically linked: All 15 are household contacts
• Cases to be epidemiologically linked: Zero of today’s cases
• *Cases epidemiologically linked (total): 942 (in current cluster) (10 unlinked)
• Number of sub-clusters: Nine epidemiologically linked subclusters. The two largest subclusters are the Mangere church group: 381; and Birkdale social network cluster: 77.
• There are nine epidemiologically unlinked subclusters.
• Cases in hospital: 22 (total): North Shore (4); Auckland (8); Middlemore (10)
• Cases in ICU or HDU: Four
• Confirmed cases (total): 3,610 since pandemic began
• *Historical cases, since 1 Jan 2021 (total): 142 out of 1,792 since 1 Jan 2021

*Linked cases
The total unlinked cases is of the cases reported within the past 14 days. The remainder of cases are now older than 14 days and have been closed. It is important to note that no onward transmission has occurred from these cases.

*Historical cases
Five previously reported historical cases had a health status of ‘not recovered’. These has been updated in our systems and have now been added to the historical case count, which is why the number has increased.

*Contacts

• Number of active contacts being managed (total): 1,242
• Percentage who have received an outbound call from contact tracers (to confirm testing and isolation requirements): 89%
• Percentage with at least one test result: 85%

* We now have 1,242 contacts under active management. This is a change from reporting total contacts across the whole outbreak. The number of contacts under active management has fallen considerably over the past two weeks, as the majority of our contacts had exposures more than 18 days ago and have been closed.

Locations of interest

• Locations of interest (total): 133 (as at 10am 14 September)

Tests

• Number of tests (total): 3,158,224
• Number of tests total (last 24 hours): 9,279
• Tests rolling average (last 7 days): 12,735
• Tests in Auckland (last 24 hours): 7,823
• Testing centres in Auckland: 22

*Wastewater

• Wastewater detections: One sample from Pukekohe detected the COVID-19 virus. Further tests are underway

* Health officials are aware of two recently recovered cases, who were released from quarantine on 30 August and 4 September who live in the same area as the latest detection. Further investigations are being carried out.

COVID-19 vaccine update

• Vaccines administered to date (total): 4,380,953; 1st doses: 2,897,385; 2nd doses: 1,483,568
• Vaccines administered yesterday (total): 54,877; 1st doses: 34,145; 2nd doses: 20,732
• Mâori: 1st doses: 269,506; 2nd doses: 129,609
• Pacific Peoples: 1st doses: 174,961; 2nd doses: 89,576

NZ COVID-19 tracer

• Registered users (total): 3,213,919
• Poster scans (total): 356,409,054
• Manual diary entries (total): 16,217,756
• Poster scans in 24 hours to midday yesterday: 2,145,540

Testing reminder

It’s pleasing to see testing numbers up yesterday.

Testing around New Zealand, and especially in Auckland, remains an essential part of our response to this outbreak. We want to find cases and testing provides confidence for understanding the extent of any spread of COVID-19.

Workers who have been invited to have a voluntary one-off asymptomatic COVID-19 test are able to return to work while they wait for their test results as they are not symptomatic.  

There is a focus on health sector workers from district health boards, primary care and community health providers, as well as some Government agencies, emergency services, supermarket operators, supply chain, post and logistics, petrol stations and dairies, transport operators and some local council workers.

These groups of workers are being contacted and asked  to go to their local Community Testing Centre, and for a few organisations we are providing on-site testing.  

For the remainder of today and tomorrow, a pop-up testing site has opened at the Gull service station at Hampton Downs.

We are continuing to remind people across Auckland to get tested if you have symptoms, especially if you live in and around Mt Eden, Massey, Favona, Ōtara, Papatoetoe, Māngere and Manurewa.

MIL OSI