Covid 19 coronavirus: No new community cases today and five in managed isolation

There are no community cases of Covid-19 again today - for the fifth day in a row - and another person has recovered.

And there are five new cases in managed isolation. The total number of active cases is 74.

Three of the imported cases are part of the international fishing crew isolating in the Sudima Hotel Christchurch Airport, bringing the total number of mariners who have tested positive to 32.

The three cases today were tested at day nine as they were part of the group who had previously been in close contact with other confirmed cases, the Ministry of Health said.

All of the positive cases are in quarantine.

The two other imported cases include family member of a positive case who is a recent returnee and both were already in quarantine in Auckland's quarantine facility.

The other case is a recent returnee who arrived from Ethiopia via Dubai and tested positive on day three routine testing. This person has also been transferred to Auckland's quarantine facility.

New Zealand's total number of confirmed cases is now 1584.

Today is the fifth day in the row there are no new community cases after the two people connected to the marine engineer tested positive on October 17.

The Sofrana cluster

The Health Ministry now has preliminary results of the genome sequencing for the two other Auckland cases linked to the marine who returned a positive test result after working on the ship the Sofrana Surville.

Those results show the three workers all have an identical form of the virus – further evidence their infections are from a common source.

Australian authorities are doing genome sequencing on the three crew members of the Sofrana Surville who tested positive on arrival in Brisbane after leaving New Zealand and those results are pending, the ministry said.

Testing

There were 3038 tests processed yesterday and the ministry said testing in Auckland had continued at a steady level with the city's metropolitan DHBs reporting 478 people swabbed at the region's seven community testing centres.

The seven community testing centres remain open today:
• Northcote Community Testing Centre,
• Northcare Accident and Medical,
• Whânau House in Henderson,
• Western Springs Community Testing Centre,
• the Whânau Ora Community Clinic in Wiri,
• the Otara Community Testing Centre,
• the North Harbour stadium carpark in Albany.

A number of urgent care clinics are also offering testing - anyone unsure of their nearest testing centre should call Healthline.

"We want to again thank New Zealanders, especially Aucklanders, who are doing the right things by remaining vigilant, self-isolating and getting tested if they have even the slightest symptoms.

"Your actions are helping to keep you, your whânau and your communities safe," the Health Ministry said in its statement.

The ministry also repeated its message to New Zealanders that it was "strongly encouraging" using the Covid Tracer app to scan QR codes where ever they go.

"The more we scan, the safer we'll be. More scans facilitate a faster response. The faster we respond, the faster we stop Covid-19."

Ministry data shows daily scans in the app have plummeted since their peak of 2.5 million in one day in early September to just 500,000 a day before the weekend.

After a plea to use the app from Health Minister Chris Hipkins and director general of health Ashley Bloomfield on Friday, daily scans doubled to almost 1 million a day over the weekend.

‌