There are no new community cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand today, and four in managed isolation facilities — one of which is historical.
Today's update by the Ministry of Health was given via a written statement as there was no press conference scheduled.
Yesterday, the Government announced it had secured enough doses of Covid-19 vaccines to cover every New Zealander, after purchasing an additional 8.5 million of the Pfizer/BioTech jab.
Mass immunisation of the wider population is aimed to roll out midway through this year, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern confirmed.
It's been over a week since the Ministry of Health last reported a case of community transmission connected to the Auckland February cluster.
On Sunday, however, an Air New Zealand worker who had been out in the community tested positive for the virus. Health authorities have said they believe the employee caught the virus at the border, but they were awaiting genome sequencing to give more clues.
Genome sequencing of the worker has now identified the variant as B.1.1.7.317, health officials announced this afternoon, adding that, unlike the UK and Brazil mutations, it is not classified as one of concern.
All air crew connected to Air New Zealand staff member have tested negative so far, with one result left outstanding.
More than half of the other close contacts have also returned a negative result.
The 35 contacts linked to the vaccination centre were the worker got their Covid-19 jab have been contacted by health officials.
Household contacts to the worker have all tested negative and remain self-isolating at home.
The air crew member returned two negative tests after returning from Japan at the end of February before they tested positive during routine surveillance testing.
According to Ardern, the worker had recently been given their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine before testing positive.
The most likely source of infection for the case is during their time overseas, meaning they were incubating the virus or already infectious when they got the jab, authorities have speculated.
BORDER CASES
There are four imported cases of Covid-19 announced by the Ministry of Health, with one identified as a historical infection.
That case arrived in the country on 17 December from the United Kingdom via Qatar.
This brings the country's number of historical infections since 1 January to 37.
This person was in the Auckland quarantine facility at the time and is no longer deemed infectious.
One of today’s cases in MIQ tested positive on day one after arriving in the country on 6 March from India via United Arab Emirates.
Another passenger travelled from India via United Arab Emirates, and tested positive on arrival on 7 March.
The other person arrived in the country on 6 March from India via United Arab Emirates and tested positive on day one in managed isolation.
All three active infection cases have been transferred to Auckland's quarantine facility.
COVID APP TRACING
There have been 2.7 million scans made into the Ministry of Health’s Covid Tracer app to date.
That’s after a further 979,598 scans in the past 24 hours, a sharp drop of 454,254 from the day earlier.
It’s prompted a plea from the Ministry of Health to remain vigilant about contact tracing even at lower alert levels.
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