No new Covid-19 cases in community reported, as household contact of MIQ worker tests negative

March 24, 2021

It comes after a cleaner working at Auckland’s Grand Millennium MIQ facility tested positive on Monday.

There are no new Covid-19 cases to report in the community in New Zealand today. 

The news was confirmed in a press conference with the Covid-19 Minister Chris Hipkins and the Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield. 

It comes as a cleaner working at the Grand Millennium Hotel MIQ facility in Auckland tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday as part of routine surveillance testing. The person - dubbed Case A - was asymptomatic. 

Genome sequencing for Case A showed a link to a person with the UK variant who had stayed at the hotel from March 13 to 15. At this time, Case A had only received one of two doses of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine. 

The fact that Case A had already received one dose of the vaccine meant their infection was "less nasty", Bloomfield said. 

Yesterday, the Ministry of Health reported a close contact Case A returned a weak positive test. They were subsequently re-tested and returned a negative PCR test result and serology result. 

Bloomfield said this person remained in a quarantine facility and indicated they either had a very mild, fleeting infection that has passed or their infection was very early on. It is also possible it had been a false positive, he said. This meant it was highly unlikely this person had passed the virus on to anyone else. 

There remains one  location of interest on the Ministry of Health website : Mount Roskill Countdown on Saturday between 3pm to 3.15pm. 

People who were at the supermarket at the time are asked to be vigilant of Covid-19 symptoms.

Bloomfield said there were "some places" that Case A had visited while potentially infectious. But, these places aren't classified as locations of interest either because infection protection controls were in place, everyone who was at the location was known, or there was no one exposed to Case A. 

It comes as Case A was reported to have visited the BestStart St Lukes kindergarten  in Auckland to pick up their grandchild on Friday March 19.

He said Case A had used the Covid Tracer app "meticulously", which had assisted contact tracing efforts.

CCTV footage and Case A's swipe card data is currently being investigated, Bloomfield said. 

Three new cases of Covid-19 in managed isolation were detected since yesterday. 

Two cases arrived on March 21. One person came from Ethiopia and the other arrived from India via the United Arab Emirates. Both tested positive at routine day one testing.

The third case arrived on March 22 from Indonesia, via Singapore. They tested positive for Covid-19 upon arrival.

All three cases will be taken to the quarantine facility in Auckland.

The seven-day rolling average of new cases detected at the border is now five. 

Three previously-reported cases have now recovered, bringing the country's active case count to 67.

The number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in New Zealand since the start of the pandemic is 2114.

Since January 1 this year, there have been 41 historical cases, out of a total of 302 cases.

The NZ Covid Tracer app now has 2,762,129 registered users.

There have been more than 944,000 poster scans in the past 24 hours. 

In total, poster scans have reached 230,443,004 and users have created 8,738,480 manual diary entries.

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