Associate Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall says no new Covid-19 cases in the community were reported overnight.
Speaking on Breakfast, Verrall said whole genome sequencing has been completed on the three new cases announced yesterday, who were all from the same family and were linked to Papatoetoe High School.
It revealed “one mutation’s difference” between the student who contracted the virus and yesterday’s cases, the former infectious diseases physician said.
“That confirms that they’re linked and that we’re not dealing with two different chains of transmission.”
She said results of wastewater testing in the Papatoetoe region, which also came through overnight, also showed no signs of the virus.
“That is sensitive enough to discover a cluster, and having a negative result tells us there’s not a large problem that we don’t know about," Verall said.
It comes as Auckland was moved down to Alert Level 2 and the rest of the country to Alert Level 1.
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