Covid update: Nine patients now in hospital - three in ICU at Middlemore

There are six new Covid-19 cases in the community, with four linked to the Auckland cluster but two still under investigation.

Three patients (up from one as of yesterday) are now in ICU at Middlemore out of a total of nine people receiving hospital treatment.

There are now 111 active cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand, with 16 of these imported cases in managed isolation.

There was no media briefing on Saturday. Instead the Ministry of Health issued an update media release.

This is the release:

There are six new confirmed cases of COVID-19 to report in the community in New Zealand today.

Four are epidemiologically linked to the cluster in Auckland – two are household contacts and two are church contacts. The other two cases reported today remain under investigation. 

There are 145 people linked to the cluster who have been moved into the Auckland quarantine facility.

This includes 75 people who have tested positive for COVID-19 and their household contacts.

This morning we had identified 2,060 close contacts, and 2,004 have been contacted and are self-isolating, and we are in the process of contacting the rest. 

For the period August 13-19, 84% of close contacts were contacted and isolated within 48 hours of the case being notified to the local PHU.

The six new cases reported today bring our total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 to 1,321, which is the number we report to the World Health Organization. 

The total number of active cases in New Zealand is 111. Sixteen of the active cases are imported cases from managed isolation facilities. 

There are nine people with COVID-19 in hospital - two in Auckland City Hospital, four people in Middlemore, two people in North Shore Hospital and one person in Waikato Hospital. 

Six people are stable on a ward, and three people in Middlemore are in ICU. 

All of the cases who are in hospital are isolated and carefully managed separately from other patients.

The public can be confident that our DHBs are managing this effectively, as they did in the first outbreak of COVID-19 in New Zealand. We have heard reports of people who are reluctant to get an ambulance or go to hospital – hospitals continue to be safe places to receive medical care, and people should feel confident going to hospital to receive treatment. 

Laboratories processed 12,256 tests for COVID-19 yesterday, bringing the total number of tests completed to date to 685,476. 

Exemptions

Under the current Alert Level 3 restrictions there are strict criteria around who can enter and leave Auckland. 

The Ministry has received more than 10,000 applications for exemptions. These applications are being assigned to teams for processing as soon as they come in – to date the team has approved more than 1,400 applications and declined around 300.

Urgent exemptions, for example, to visit a dying relative, are prioritised and dealt with promptly. 

We encourage people to check the information on the website to see whether they need to apply.

To make the application process easier, the team is working on creating a form that will be on the website soon.

NZ COVID Tracer

There are now 1,712,000 users registered with NZ COVID Tracer – that is 42% of the population aged 15 and over.

There are now 309,218 QR code posters – and the self-service portal is still the fastest and easiest way for people to get their QR codes. 

Turnaround for manual QR code requests is currently around 24 hours. This is for manual requests where people cannot use the self-service portal.

There have been 12,918,793 poster scans to date, and 1,441,268 manual entries into the app. 

Anyone having problems getting started with the app should get in touch with the support team either by email or phone 0800 800 606. 

The team is dealing with a high volume of queries, so please be patient if you don’t get an immediate response.