Forty-one new Covid-19 community cases in Delta outbreak today

August 23, 2021

There are 41 new Covid-19 cases in the community on Tuesday, made up of 38 in Auckland and three in Wellington.

All three Wellington cases are known close contacts.

The Director-General of Health made the revelation at a Health Select Committee on Tuesday.

All new cases are being or have been transferred into a quarantine facility.

The total number of cases in New Zealand in this outbreak is now 148, made up of 137 in Auckland and 11 in Wellington.

The majority of the cases in this outbreak are of Samoan ethnicity, largely due to 58 cases linked to the Assembly of God church in Māngere.

So far, 89 of the total cases in this outbreak have been epidemiologically linked to the Auckland outbreak. The remaining 59 are still under investigation but the majority have links to the outbreak, including being a household contact or were at a location of interest.

Eighty of the cases have been genome sequenced and all have been linked to the outbreak.

Dr Ashley Bloomfield noted Pasifika were the majority affected in the outbreak, praising their proactive approach to testing.

"There are several mutations that are appearing that are helping to identify sub-clusters and again help us get around those particular sub-clusters," Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said.

"As each new community case is reported, isolated and investigated we are learning more about the spread of this outbreak. With our latest cluster we do know what actions will slow the spread of the virus and we expect to see that slowing will begin to happen during this week."

Eight people with the virus linked to this outbreak are in hospital in Auckland. None are in intensive care.

"Delta is unlike our previous experience," Bloomfield said.

"This reinforces just how critical it is that people follow the Level 4 rules. Staying at home, leaving the house only for essential reasons."

Bloomfield said the number of contacts linked to the Auckland outbreak continues to increase.

As of 9am Tuesday there were 15,741 contacts who have been formally identified, most of which are classified as close contacts and 369 are considered to be "close-plus contacts". The number is around 10 times the number compared to the same point in last year's August cluster.

So far, 9757 of the total contacts have been followed up and are isolating. Work is ongoing to contacting the remaining contacts.

There are now more than 420 locations of interest on the Ministry of Health's website .

It was announced on Monday that Auckland would remain at Alert Level 4 until at least 11.59pm next Tuesday, and the rest of New Zealand at Level 4 until at least 11.59pm this Friday.

As well, there was one new Covid-19 case found at the border today. The case, whose full travel history is yet to be confirmed, arrived in Auckland on August 17 and tested positive on day 6 in managed isolation.

The total number of active cases being managed in New Zealand, including both border and community cases, is currently 183.

On Monday, there were 35,376 tests processed across the country, including 26,500 in Auckland and 2500 in Wellington.

The total number of Covid-19 tests processed by laboratories to date is 2.76 million.

There were no unexpected Covid-19 detections in wastewater to report on Tuesday.

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