16 Nov 2020

Covid-19: Weak positive case confirmed to be community infection

12:52 pm on 16 November 2020

The weak positive case reported yesterday has been confirmed as a community case, with two more cases also reported at New Zealand's border.

COVID-19, Coronavirus, group of viruses in a worldwide pandemic concept.

Photo: 123rf.com

In a statement, the Health Ministry said the weak positive result from a neighbour of this week's community case in Auckland - reported yesterday - has now had a third test that returned a positive result.

"These test results indicate that this new case is a very recent infection."

This case has been in the Auckland quarantine facility since 12 November, the ministry said.

"Auckland Regional Public Health have identified seven close contacts and three casual contacts. All have been contacted and testing arranged."

The ministry said there were no places of interest identified so far for this latest case.

The two new imported cases reported today include one person who arrived from the UK on 10 November via Qatar and Australia, tested positive in day three testing in Hamilton and is now being transferred to the Auckland quarantine facility. The second case arrived from Dubai on 10 November and was also detected on testing around day three.

There were 10,525 coronavirus tests carried out yesterday - the highest number of tests in one weekend day since mid-August, with almost 70 percent of the testing carried out in the Auckland region.

The total number of active cases is now 58 and New Zealand has now reported a total of 1645 cases.

Public health expert Michael Baker is asking for masks to be made mandatory on public transport. He said wearing masks would help dampen down the threat of community transmission and was one way to avoid another lockdown.

The government last week said it was wanting to make mask-wearing mandatory on all public transport in the Auckland region from Monday.

Yesterday there were three new cases in New Zealand's managed isolation facilities. They travelled from Romania, Australia and the UK.

According to a Reuters tally, nearly 1.3 million people have died from Covid-19 globally, and 53.6m have been infected.

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