The Ministry of Health says there are 12 new COVID-19 cases in New Zealand, all detected in managed isolation, with 10 being people off the same flight from India.
No new community cases were reported on Thursday.
The 10 cases from India arrived on 26 September on flight AI 1354 and tested positive on day three of their time in managed isolation.
"We can report that cases were spread out throughout the plane on their flight to New Zealand, sitting between rows 14 and 41. We acknowledge that this is a high number of cases. It reflects that most of the rest of the world continues to experience high levels of COVID-19. This also re-emphasises why we have strong border control measures in place, including day three and day 12 testing, to keep New Zealand and New Zealanders safe," the Ministry of Health says.
The Ministry also says that since August 11 its contact tracing team has identified 4,047 close contacts of COVID-19 cases, with all contacted and either self-isolating or having completed self-isolation. On Wednesday 5,679 tests were processed.
Here's the full Ministry of Health press release.
12 new cases of COVID-19
There are 12 new cases of COVID-19 to report today, all detected in managed isolation. All have been transferred to a dedicated quarantine facility.
There are no new cases in the community.
Ten of these cases arrived from India on 26 September on flight AI 1354 and have tested positive around day 3 of their time in managed isolation. We can report that cases were spread out throughout the plane on their flight to New Zealand, sitting between rows 14 and 41.
We acknowledge that this is a high number of cases. It reflects that most of the rest of the world continues to experience high levels of COVID-19.
This also re-emphasises why we have strong border control measures in place, including day 3 and day 12 testing, to keep New Zealand and New Zealanders safe.
Of today’s other cases, one case arrived from the USA on 26 September and tested positive around day 3 of their time in managed isolation.
One case arrived from the Philippines via Taiwan on 23 September and was tested because they were a contact of a case. They tested positive on 30 September.
There are 14 people isolating in the Auckland quarantine facility from the community, which includes five people who have tested positive for COVID-19 and their household contacts.
One person is in hospital with COVID-19 at Middlemore hospital. The patient is in isolation on a general ward. Since August 11, our contact tracing team has identified 4,047 close contacts of cases, of which 4,047 have been contacted and are self-isolating or have completed self-isolation. This number has dropped since yesterday due to records being identified as duplicates in the system.
Three previously reported cases are considered to have recovered, bringing our total number of active cases to 53.
Of those, 42 are imported cases in MIQ facilities, and 11 are community cases.
Our total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 is 1,492, which is the number we report to the World Health Organization.
Yesterday our laboratories processed 5,679 tests, bringing the total number of tests completed to date to 966,238.
NZ COVID Tracer
There are now 2,287,700 users registered on NZ COVID Tracer.
The app has recorded a total of 80,243,522 poster scans, and users have created 3,475,327 manual diary entries in NZ COVID Tracer.
We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment
Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.