News
Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield and Health Minister Chris Hipkins are providing an update on Covid-19.
Latest from the live update:
- Dr Bloomfield says there are five new confirmed cases. Two are imported and three are in the community.
- Two of the community cases are contacts of cases that were already known about and one is under investigation. One case from yesterday considered a household case in now under investigation.
- There are 134 active cases.A woman in her 50s and a man in his 30s are the imported cases.
- There are 2422 close contacts of cases 2368 of these have been contacted.
- Five people associated with the Mt Roskill Evangelical Fellowship church have been diagnosed with Covid-19 in the last two or three days, Dr Bloomfield says.
- Anyone who went to services held on the 8th, 9th or 11th of August – and a wedding held at the church on Friday the 7th of August – should get tested if they are unwell and otherwise stay at home.
- There are nine people in hospital, two in Auckland City, three in North Shore (one in ICU) and the rest in Middlemore, two are in ICU and consider critical.
- 710,063 tests have been processed to date.
- 160 people connected to the cluster have been moved to an Auckland quarantine facility.
- There are four new pop up testing sites today.There will be testing in the community of people without symptoms as part of the surveillance programme, Dr Ashley Bloomfield says.
- Hipkins says QR codes will be mandatory on public transport.
- “This latest requirement will add to the systems’ overall effectiveness,” Hipkins says. He says it will assist in quick contact tracing.
- He says many people don’t register their HOP or Snapper cards, so they can be difficult to trace.
- Transport operators won’t be enforcing the scanning of QR codes, he’s asking the public to comply with the rule.
- It will be required from next Thursday on buses, trains, ride shares and ferries Māori and Pasifika health experts have been added to the new health group.Hipkins says the group will be looking at all aspects of testing protocol.
Watch the 1pm briefing here:
https://youtu.be/fZwM-Cbphw4