There are 45 new community cases of Covid-19 to report on Wednesday.
Of these cases, 33 are household or close contacts. Of the 26 household contacts, 12 come from two households.
The remaining 12 cases are unlinked. At this stage, six of these look likely to be linked.
Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said a number of cases over the past week have been in large households. He said a high proportion of cases have been living in transitional or emergency housing.
For this reason, he expected the uptick in case numbers.
While today's cases don't have gang affiliations, Bloomfield said cases announced two or three weeks ago included a group of households with gang affiliations.
Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins described the increase is case numbers as sobering. However, he said the Government considered the nature and characteristics of cases, rather than just the number, when assessing alert levels.
The Ministry of Health said: "Now that Auckland is at Alert Level 3, some of these people may have been working in essential or permitted businesses during their infectious periods.
"This emphasises the importance of everyone in Auckland continuing to abide by Alert Level 3 measures - including mask wearing and staying in your bubble."
Here is the latest from the Ministry of Health:
| Cases | |
| Number of new community cases | 45 |
| Number of new cases identified at the border | No cases |
| Location of new community cases | Auckland |
| Location of community cases (total) | Auckland (including 4 cases in Upper Hauraki; all of whom are in the same household) 1,213 (969 of whom have recovered); Wellington 17 (all of whom have recovered) |
| Number of community cases (total) | 1,230 (in the current community outbreak) |
| Cases infectious in the community | Four (50%) of yesterday’s cases have exposure events |
| Cases in isolation throughout the period they were infectious | Four (50 %) of yesterday’s cases |
| Cases epidemiologically linked | 33 of today’s 45 cases are linked. Of these 26 are household contacts. |
| Cases to be epidemiologically linked | Twelve of today’s 45 cases. Investigations are continuing to determine a link. |
| Cases epidemiologically linked (total) | 1,193 (in the current cluster) (15 unlinked from the past fortnight). |
| Number of sub-clusters | 15 epidemiologically linked subclusters. Of these, three are active, eight are contained and four are dormant. There are 10 epidemiologically unlinked subclusters. Of these, none are active, three are contained and seven are dormant. |
| Cases in hospital | 16 (total): North Shore (2) Middlemore (7); Auckland (7) |
| Cases in ICU or HDU | Three |
| Confirmed cases (total)* | 3,892 since pandemic began. |
| Historical cases, since 1 Jan 2021 (total) | 159 out of 2,074 since 1 Jan 2021 |
| Contacts | |
| Number of open contacts being managed (total): | 951 |
| Percentage who have received an outbound call from contact tracers (to confirm testing and isolation requirements) | 92% |
| Percentage with at least one test result | 91% |
| Locations of interest | |
| Locations of interest (total) | 91 (as at 10am 28 September) |
| Tests | |
| Number of tests (total) | 3,361,927 |
| Number of tests processed (total last 24 hours) | 15,437 |
| Tests processed in Auckland (last 24 hours) | 8,537 |
| Tests rolling average (last 7 days) | 13,438 |
| Testing centres in Auckland | 21 |
| Wastewater | |
| Wastewater detections | There are no new unexpected wastewater detections. We are awaiting further results following the positive detection in Tauranga reported yesterday. |
| COVID-19 vaccine update | |
| Vaccines administered to date (total) | 5,132,627; 1st doses: 3,266,796; 2nd doses: 1,865,831 |
| Vaccines administered yesterday (total) | 44,649 1st doses: 13,519; 2nd doses: 31,130 |
| Mâori | 1st doses: 314,427; 2nd doses: 163,804 |
| Pacific Peoples | 1st doses: 203,198; 2nd doses: 114,733 |
| Vaccines administered to Auckland residents to date (total) | 1,868,161; 1st doses: 1,185,737 (83%); 2nd doses: 682,424 (48%) |
| Vaccines administered to Auckland residents yesterday (total) | 14,376; 1st doses: 3,884; 2nd doses: 10,492 |
| NZ COVID-19 tracer | |
| Registered users (total) | 3,259,983 |
| Poster scans (total) | 392,744,620 |
| Manual diary entries (total) | 17,213,554 |
| Poster scans in 24 hours to midday yesterday | 2,358,889 |
*There are four new recoveries to report and a case from yesterday has now been reclassified as under investigation. Therefore the total case count has increased by 44 today.
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