The Ministry of Health is reporting 75 new Covid cases, with one in Wellington and the rest in Auckland.
It is the first rise in numbers since Sunday and comes as large parts of the country drop down to Alert Level 3.
The case in Wellington was a contact of existing cases and tested positive after have three previous negative tests - and was still asymptomatic.
Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said the "latest bounce" in numbers was not unexpected and said the numbers had bounced around in similar fashion during Level 4 last year.
He believed there was a "90%" probability the 'R' value was under 1 - meaning that infected numbers could be expected to come down.
There are 32 people in hospital - all in Auckland. Eight of these are in ICU with three on ventilators.
A case in hospital in Wellington has now been released back to quarantine.
There were 22,158 tests processed on Tuesday. In total there have now been more than 3 million tests processed since the start of the pandemic.
There were 6500 swabs taken in Auckland on Tuesday.
Bloomfield said out of caution a further 40 supermarkets in the Auckland area had been added as places of interest. These were all places positive cases had visited, but the risk was considered low.
Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said the pause on vouchers for Managed Isolation had been extended for a few weeks. He gave no date for when bookings would be available again.
Hipkins said 54% of eligible people had now received at least one vaccination. He said 68% of eligible people had either had one jab or made a booking.
The big rise in vaccinations has put pressure on vaccine stocks with the big shipments not due to arrive till next month.
Hipkins said vaccinations would be focused on Auckland and on honouring existing bookings till the middle of the month.
The Government would be advising on the situation around availability of vaccines by the end of this week.
This is the detailed update from the Ministry of Health:
| Cases | |
| Number of new community cases | 75 |
| Number of new cases identified at the border | 1 |
| Location of new cases | Auckland (74); Wellington (1) |
| Location of community cases (total) | Auckland 671; Wellington 16 |
| Number of community cases (total) | 687 (in current community outbreak) |
| Cases infectious in the community | 25% of yesterday’s cases have exposure events |
| Cases in isolation throughout the period they were infected | 75% of yesterday’s cases |
| Cases epidemiologically linked | 25 of today’s cases |
| Cases to be epidemiologically linked | 50 of today’s cases |
| Cases epidemiologically linked (total) | 632 (in current cluster) (55 unlinked) |
| Number of sub-clusters | Seven. The two largest subclusters are the Mangere church group: 320; and Birkdale social network cluster: 73 |
| Cases in hospital | 32 (total): North Shore (5); Middlemore (13); Auckland (14). |
| Cases in ICU or HDU | 8 |
| Confirmed cases (total) | 3,288 since pandemic began |
| Historical cases, since 1 Jan 2021 (total) | 126 out of 1,472 since 1 Jan 2021 |
| Contacts | |
| Number of contacts identified (total) | 34,832 |
| Percentage who have received outbound call from contact tracers (to confirm testing and isolation requirements) | 85% |
| Percentage with at least one test result | 91% |
| Locations of interest | |
| Locations of interest (total) | 344 (as at 9am 1 September) |
| Tests | |
| Number of tests (total) | 3,006,586 |
| Number of tests total (last 24 hours) | 22,158 |
| Tests in Auckland (last 24 hours) | 6,500 |
| Tests rolling average (last 7 days) | 27,658 |
| Testing centres in Auckland | 26 |
| Wastewater | |
| Wastewater detections | No unexpected detections in past 24 hours |
| Whole genome sequencing | |
| Links to current outbreak | 461 cases to date have been sequenced with 41 genomes |
| COVID-19 vaccine update | |
| Vaccines administered to date (total) | 3.5m; 1st doses: 2.29m; 2nd doses: 1.21m |
| Vaccines administered yesterday (total) | 84,971; 1st doses: 57,733; 2nd doses: 27,238 |
| Māori | 1st doses: 208,854; 2nd doses: 108,639 |
| Pacific Peoples | 1st doses:134,701; 2nd doses: 74,157 |
| NZ COVID-19 tracer | |
| Registered users (total) | 3,125,261 |
| Poster scans (total) | 334,327,807 |
| Manual diary entries (total) | 15,026,006 |
| Poster scans in 24 hours to midday yesterday | 684,190 |
*There may be some delays in providing data in some instances. On these occasions we will use data from the day before and clearly note this.
New cases identified at the border
| Arrival date | From | Via | Positive test day/reason | Managed isolation/quarantine location |
| 28 August | Full travel history not yet obtained | Qatar | Day 3 / routine | Auckland |
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