Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield has revealed the country has had just one new confirmed case of Covid-19 reported in New Zealand in the past 24 hours.
Watch the briefing here:
Dr Bloomfield said the person who tested positive was a household contact of a previous case from the Matamata cluster.
Two people are in hospital but there are no patients in ICU and there have been no further deaths.
Dr Bloomfield said this brings the total number of cases to 1489, with 1332 people recovered - 89 percent of cases.
"Yesterday our labratories processed a record 7323 tests, bringing the total number of tests undertaken to date to 168,023."
He said more than 500 people have now been tested from the Marist School group.
Dr Bloomfield said evidence relating to the virus continued to emerge, but there was a better understanding of how the virus transmitted.
"The key thing here is we are increasingly in a position to be able to go into alert level 2, because of the low numbers of cases we have through our efforts from the lockdown."
Dr Bloomfield said the ministry was working with the Aged Care Association and had developed a new questionnaire about testing and other screening processes for people going into aged care.
He said the review of the 32 exemption cases to leave mandatory isolation early on compassionate grounds has now been completed.
All of the decisions have been deemed to have been made correctly.
However, Dr Bloomfield said some would have had a different outcome if the new criteria had been used.
He said there was one person who has left managed isolation to visit a dying relative.
At yesterday's briefing, two new cases of Covid-19 were reported, one confirmed and one probable, after two days in a row of zero cases.
One further death was also announced yesterday - a woman in her 60s who was part of the Rosewood cluster and had underlying health conditions.
- If you have symptoms of the coronavirus, call the NZ Covid-19 Healthline on 0800 358 5453 (+64 9 358 5453 for international SIMs) or call your GP - don't show up at a medical centre
