There are 89 new cases of coronavirus in New Zealand, Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield says. It brings the total number of cases since the pandemic began to 1039.
New Zealand has 82 new Covid-19 cases - and Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield has raised the possibility cases may have peaked.
And a new guidance is soon to be issued, outlining what constitutes an acceptable lockdown bubble - and clarifying the police powers to enforce it.
There are 52new confirmed cases and 30 probables, Bloomfield said today, bringing to 950 the total number of confirmed and probable cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand.
Bloomfield said he would provide advice to Cabinet this week as to whether the four-week lockdown - now into its 10th day - should be extended.
Bloomfield said there had been a "flattening off" of new cases but he would like to see another two or three days of lower new case numbers to be confident of that.
"The number of cases does seem to be levelling off," Bloomfield said.
"We've got good levels of testing happening. That's providing us with good information. So we're increasingly confident these lockdown measures are working."
He said there are 10 significant clusters. In Auckland, around Marist school there are 60 associated cases, in Bluff, around a wedding, 55 cases, and in Matamata 54 cases.
There were 3631 tests done yesterday, for a total of 33,116 tests so far.
At this stage, 127 people have recovered, Bloomfield said.
Some 300,000 new nasal swabs are due to be delivered in the coming week, he said.
About 1 per cent of cases are from community transmission. Bloomfied expects that number to rise.
He said during the past week, there had been a high level of lockdown compliance across the country, but a new notice will be provided to let people know what an acceptable bubble is.
He said there are still some people who are not following the Government's guidance.
The new public health notice will clarify police powers.
It will provide the public and the police with more clarity, he said.
Asked if he was confident police had enough power, Bloomfield said the new guidance was quite clear.
Director of Public Health Caroline McElnay said there has been no change to the Government's recovery condition - when 10 days have passed since the onset of symptoms and 48 hours after a person is symptom-free.
She said the Government is watching advice from the World Health Organisation for people being required to wear masks when they are out and about.
This is the requirement in the US - but Bloomfield said the US was in a different position to New Zealand, with much wider community transmission.
"We're not in that position."
She said there are areas where wearing a mask is unhelpful - for example, sometimes it leads to people touching their face more, she said.
So far, just one person in New Zealand has died from Covid-19. But the global death toll approaches 60,000 and there are now more than one million confirmed cases around the world.
