Businesses with a 40 per cent reduction in revenue due to Covid-19 are now eligible for the wage subsidy extension.
There have been no new cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand for 14 days in a row.
There is still one active case, which would be declared recovered at least 10 days after the onset of symptoms and 48 hours after their symptoms ended, director general of health Dr AshleyBloomfield said at yesterday's briefing.
The combined total of confirmed and probable cases remains at 1504, the Ministry of Health said today.
The number of recovered cases is unchanged at 1481.
Yesterday, laboratories around the country completed 2813 tests, bringing the total number of tests completed to date to 288,987.
Seven of New Zealand's significant clusters have closed.
The most recent of these is the World Hereford Conference cluster, which was closed today.
"A cluster is considered to be closed when there have been no new cases for two incubation periods (i.e. 28 days) from the date when all cases have completed isolation," the ministry said.
Businesses which were still not contact tracing should "get with the programme", Bloomfield said yesterday.
Meanwhile, Kiwis will find out on Monday when the country will move to level 1, which could be just days later.
Moving to level 1 will continue the debate around reopening borders and operating a transtasman bubble with Australia.
But Bloomfield said borders needed to be reopened safely.
Italy has just started lifting restrictions - despite having more than 40,000 active cases and 3000 new cases in the last week.
In New South Wales, Australia, rates of cases were very low, with no new cases Wednesday - but 13 confirmed cases in the week to May 30.
NSW's confirmed cases is around double that of New Zealand's of both confirmed and probable cases. The state's population was similar to New Zealand and Bloomfield said it was a good comparison.
Both NSW and New Zealand have substantially lower death rates per case than other countries.
Restrictions are being lifted comparatively quickly in New Zealand - including compared to NSW.
On Monday, Bloomfield joined a regional World Health Organisation call on the topic of how to reopen borders safely.
"We need to remain vigilant to the threat that the virus poses," he said.
"While NZ was looking at a possible return to level 1, this would not be life back to normal. Hand hygiene, keeping a diary of where you've been and staying home when sick were all important."
Despite New Zealand being ahead of other countries in the Covid-19 fight, Bloomfield said there were still lessons to be learnt from other countries as they reopened borders and lifted restrictions - including Italy and the UK.
There have been around 380,000 Covid-19 deaths reported to the World Health Organisation.
