Dr Ashley Bloomfield says New Zealand is "making progress" in its battle against Delta, with the number of active community cases continuing to decline and many clusters now contained.
The Director-General of Health appeared alongside Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern during a post-Cabinet press conference Monday, highlighting the country's progress so far.
"Today the seven day rolling average of cases is 15, compared with 17 last week and 19 the week before that. Importantly that drop has happened in Alert Level 3.
"And also pleasingly the number of active cases continues to decline, it’s now 211."
Twelve new cases were announced in the community on Monday, all in Auckland. Many of the country's Covid clusters are now considered to be "contained".
"That is any new cases are among known contacts who are already isolating or clusters are dormant that is that have not given rise to any new cases in the last 14 days," said Bloomfield.
"There are now just four active sub-clusters where there have been cases emerging in unknown contacts and public health efforts are heavily focused on containing those sub-clusters."
He also pointed to the country's "relatively" low rate of hospitalisation during the outbreak.
"These are all encouraging signs our response is working as intended, breaking chains of transmission and drawing a circle around the outbreak. As I said we are making progress.
"Covid-19 is not a trivial disease. Testing remains essential and it’s good to see the high number of tests continue each day."
It comes as Ardern on Monday released further details around a self-isolation trial for returnees to New Zealand.
She said the trial would be capped at 150 people and focus on businesses and employees who need to go overseas for work.
Auckland remains in Alert Level 3 while the rest of New Zealand is at Alert Level 2, a review is due on Monday October 4.
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