Hawke's Bay has one further Covid-19 case linked to rest home

Hawke's Bay had one of the three new national Covid-19 cases today. Photo / Paul Taylor

One new Covid-19 case in Hawke's Bay has taken the regional total to 44.

Medical Officer of Health Dr Nick Jones said the new case, a female healthcare worker at Gladys Mary Care Home in Napier, had never had any symptoms.

The case came to light following surveillance testing initiated by the DHB's Public Health unit of all staff members at the care home and would also be linked to the Ruby Princess significant cluster.

On Sunday a male healthcare worker from the home was also confirmed with Covid-19, despite displaying no obvious symptoms.

Jones said close contacts of Tuesday's confirmed case had been followed up and there was no wider risk to the public.

Public Health had also met with residents at a holiday park where the man had been living and precautionary testing of residents would be completed today.

"Thanks to this additional testing we have detected Covid-19 cases that would have otherwise gone unnoticed and we continue to work very closely with Gladys Mary Care Home on further testing.

"It is possible that the two recently detected cases were infected some time ago and are no longer infectious. However, it is clear that we cannot assume there are no active transmission chains and we must therefore remain vigilant and follow strict hygiene and physical distancing measures when exiting our household bubbles, particularly given we have now moved into Alert Level 3," he said.

Nationally there had been 10 straight days where the number of new cases has been in single digits.

On Monday there were five new cases, and with a number of probable cases being reclassified, the total number of cases stood at 1469.

With 1180 recoveries, there were 270 active cases across the country.

Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said more cases would continue to pop up under the elimination goal.

Level 4 lockdown had achieved what it set out to do, he said, but there were still ongoing cases of Covid-19 and overseas experience shows how quickly those numbers can rise again if "we take our foot off the pedal".

He said elimination was not a point in time, but a sustained effort "to keep it out and stamp it out".

Bloomfield said elimination had been achieved in terms of what alert level 4 set out to achieve, but elimination was an "ongoing effort".

He referred to epidemiologist Sir David Skegg's definition of a small number of cases and an ability to stamp those out quickly.

New Zealand's goal was not the same as other countries that were trying to manage outbreaks, he said.

"We haven't eliminated it and we haven't eradicated it. Elimination is not a point in time. Our elimination goal continues into alert level 3, and to maintain that we need to be even more vigilant."

* Feeling unwell? Call your GP or Healthline for free on 0800 358 5453 to be assessed for referral to a Community-Based Assessment Centre (CBAC) for testing.