18 Oct 2021

Covid-19 update: 60 new community cases ahead of alert level decision

1:29 pm on 18 October 2021

There are 60 new community cases of Covid-19 in the country today, the Ministry of Health reports.

Coronavirus COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, 3D illustration. Close-up view of a corona virus with surface spikes

Photo: 123rf.com

In a statement, the ministry said 57 of today's new community cases are in Auckland and three are in Waikato.

It said as at 10am, 36 of the cases are linked - 18 of which are household contacts - and 24 remain unlinked, with investigations continuing to help determine their connection to the outbreak.

There are also five new cases at the border: one from the USA, one from Lebanon, one from India, one from Greece and one from the United Kingdom.

The ministry also revealed that a staff member at Remuera Gardens retirement village in Auckland has been confirmed as having Covid-19 and was at work whilst infectious.

"Public health staff are confident the risk of infection is low, but as a precaution, testing is being arranged for all staff and residents. Both staff and residents at the village have very high vaccination rates."

As at 10am today, there are a total of 455 locations of interest.

The ministry said there were 1896 active contacts being managed - 83 percent had been contacted and 75 percent had at least one test result.

There are 30 Covid-19 cases in hospital today: five in North Shore, 12 in Middlemore and 13 in Auckland. Five cases are in ICU or HDU.

The ministry said there had been 4696 cases since the pandemic began.

There are a total of 1943 community cases in Auckland, of which 1350 have recovered. In Waikato, there are 45 community cases and three have recovered, and in Wellington there are 17 community cases and all of them have recovered.

In Waikato, there are three new cases. One is linked to known cases, while interviews and investigations are continuing to determine any link for the other two cases.

"Investigations are also continuing to determine the links of two cases reported last week and two cases from yesterday," the ministry said.

On vaccinations, the ministry said 89 percent of Aucklanders had now had one dose (1,271,322 people), 71 percent have had their second (1,022,871 people).

Yesterday 11,259 vaccines were administered to Auckland residents.

To date there have been 6,344,212 doses administered around the country - 3,572,298 first doses and 2,271,914 second doses.

In the past 24 hours, 20,809 Covid-19 tests were processed.

Yesterday there were 4020 tests undertaken in Waikato and almost 1489 doses of vaccine administered.

On Sunday 51 new cases were reported - four in Waikato and the rest in Auckland.

The ministry yesterday confirmed that on Saturday (Super Saturday) 130,002 people were given a dose of the Pfizer vaccine. They included 39,025 first doses and 90,977 second doses.

Cabinet will today decide whether Auckland, Northland and parts of the Waikato can move alert levels.

RNZ understands ministers will also consider a traffic light-like system New Zealand could move to once the population is highly vaccinated.

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