No new Covid cases

There were no new Covid-19 cases in New Zealand yesterday, the Ministry of Health confirmed.

The number of active cases remains at 18, and all are in managed isolation or quarantine, the ministry said. One person remained in Auckland City Hospital in a stable condition.

Government officials have also said they were considering bringing back special release exemptions for people in quarantine seeking to leave early on compassionate grounds.

More planning around this would be underway next week.

Since the pandemic began, New Zealand has reported 1180 confirmed cases to the World Health Organisation – 56 of these were identified at the border.

Of the 16 significant clusters identified during the pandemic, all but one have closed. This last cluster is due to close on Monday, the ministry said.

On Thursday, labs completed

3703 tests, bringing the total tests done to date to 409,032. The seven-day rolling average of tests is 4396.

New Zealand Covid Tracer has recorded 587,000 registrations. The number of posters created by businesses is now 76,251. There have been

1,322,431 poster scans to date.