There are 11 new community Covid-19 cases since Wednesday evening, all in Auckland.
This brings the total number of cases in this latest community outbreak to 21, with the case of an Air New Zealand crew member now deemed to be a community case after previously being classified as border-related.
The news was confirmed in a press conference Thursday afternoon with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield.
Bloomfield said two of the cases have been transferred to North Shore Hospital. One person has "worsening symptoms", and the other has an underlying condition.
The Prime Minister says officials have tracked the outbreak to a traveller on a red flight from Australia who later become ill.
One person is in their 20s, the other person is in their 40s. Both are in a stable condition.
Further details about today's 11 new cases will be released this afternoon, he said.
Bloomfield said all 11 cases have been transferred to the Auckland quarantine facility.
He said 12 of the cases have been confirmed as being part of the cluster. A formal link hasn't been established for the remaining eight cases, but there were "strong leads" to the cluster.
“These new community cases are not unexpected…we would expect the number of cases to continue to grow, in particular, because of the large number of locations of interest and the mobility of these cases over the few days before the lockdown started.”
New Zealand remains in Alert Level 4.
Meanwhile, the list of locations of interest continues to grow rapidly. The full list is available on the Ministry of Health's website .
Genome sequence analysis has been completed. Ardern said it showed the latest outbreak was a close match to a recent returnee from Sydney who came to New Zealand on August 7 aboard a managed red zone flight. The person was then tested on August 8, and the test result came back positive the next day.
The person was then transferred from the Crowne Plaza MIQ facility to the Jet Park facility on August 9. The person then became unwell and was moved to Middlemore Hospital.
Ardern said Middlemore Hospital isn't part of current investigations, as the returnee was only moved to the hospital on August 16.
"Our cases our most likely to have come from the traveller," Ardern said, calling it a "significant development" because this meant there would be minimal "upstream" cases before the Devonport man tested positive.
That meant, there would only be about "one or two" missing links between the returnee and the first case detected in the community on Tuesday.
Finding the missing link is now the priority, Ardern said.
A family of three who was staying next to that traveller in the Crowne Plaza MIQ facility has tested positive on day 12 of their stay in MIQ.
Because of the infections, Bloomfield said the release of the cohort currently at the facility will be delayed.
There are also eight new Covid-19 cases in MIQ today. Two are historical cases.
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