There are two new cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand today, the Health Ministry has confirmed.
Photo: AFP
There was no 1pm media conference today but in a statement the ministry said both new cases were detected in recent returnees in managed isolation.
There are no new community cases.
One of the new cases is a person who arrived from Moscow via London, Qatar and Brisbane on 14 November and the other arrived from Dubai on 14 November.
There are now 37 active cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand.
"We have seen a large number of cases recovered this week, with 29 recoveries to announce today," the ministry said.
The total number of confirmed cases is now 1654.
Yesterday there were 8665 tests processed for Covid-19, bringing the total number of tests completed to date to 1,208,091.
On the November quarantine cluster, the ministry said the Auckland Regional Public Health Service was continuing to follow-up contacts from existing cases that are part of the cluster.
"All 23 close contacts of Case A have now returned negative day 12 tests and all occupants of Case A's apartment (the Waldorf Apartments) have returned negative day 12 tests," the ministry said.
"The genome sequencing has shown that Cases A, B, C, D and E are all part of the same outbreak.
"As we said yesterday, wide testing around these known cases allows us to have greater confidence that there are not possible undetected links in the chain of transmission."
The NZ Covid Tracer app now has 2,372,000 registered users.
Earlier today the government revealed it had reached an in-principle agreement to purchase doses of a Covid-19 vaccine for the entire population.
The agreement with Janssen Pharmaceutica is subject to the vaccine successfully completing clinical trials and passing regulatory approvals in New Zealand. If all goes to plan, the first doses - up to two million - would be delivered from the third quarter of 2021.
The Pfizer vaccine would be available in the early part of 2021.
New testing measures are also being introduced for border workers, including increasing the frequency for some of those at higher risk.
Meanwhile, Samoa has recorded its first positive test for Covid-19 - a sailor who arrived in Samoa on a repatriation flight from Auckland last Friday.
