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Watch live: Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield gives update on Covid-19
Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield is giving a Covid-19 update.
Watch the briefing live here at 1pm:
Latest updates:
- Bloomfield says there are no new cases in New Zealand for the fifth consecutive day. This means there have just been three cases in the past 16 days.
- There are no additional deaths to report and the only remaining person in hospital with Covid-19 in New Zealand has been discharged. There are now no people in hospital with the virus in New Zealand.
- Labs processed 4279 tests, bringing total tests in NZ to 267,435.
- Another roughly 17,000 people have registered on the NZ Covid Tracer app, bringing the total to about 422,000 people. Bloomfield says there are now over 17,000 QR posters in businesses around New Zealand that work with the app.
- The Ministry is launching another app today called Afina providing advice to health professionals.“We’ve worked on that app with feedback and input from people across the system”.
- Dr Bloomfield is encouraging people to continue to build physical activity into their day.
- Dr Bloomfield says New Zealand is staying in alert level 2 to be certain that there is no further spread of Covid-19 and also to ensure border procedures are safe and secure.
- He says he can’t speak to Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters’ comments this morning that the country should be in alert level 1 already. “What I can say is that we are working very hard on what level 1 will look like, and also separately working very hard with a whole range of players … on what a trans-Tasman bubble will look like and that requires having confidence in the arrangements on both sides of the Tasman.”
- “What our job is, is to provide really good advice …. to help make sure there is no risk of transmission between countries.”
- Dr Bloomfield says the Ministry’s position at the moment remains that anyone coming into the country needs to either be in quarantine or managed isolation for two weeks.
- Back to the numbers – one further person is listed as recovered from the virus in NZ.
- Dr Bloomfield says he does not think the success of New Zealand will affect the country’s ability to get access to a vaccine when one becomes available.