17 people on same Delhi flight all tested positive

AUCKLAND: A staggering 17 people who travelled from India to Auckland last month on a single flight have now tested positive for Covid19.

The Air India flight from Delhi touched down in New Zealand on August 23 and since then men, women and children have become infected over the past fortnight after travelling on the 20hour flight.

The Health Ministry revealed last month the first group of seven sick passengers was detected during the routine day 3 testing in managed isolation.

On August 28 seven passengers — three men in their 30s, a woman in her 60s, a woman in her 20s and two children — had all tested positive for Covid19.

In a day when the country experienced a sudden surge in imported Covid cases, health officials confirmed they all arrived in New Zealand on August 23 on the same Air India flight from Delhi, and tested positive around day 3 of their stay in managed isolation.

The next day a woman in her 70s and a man in his 30s who were both staying at the Grand Millennium in Auckland, and who both travelled on the same August 23 flight from India, tested positive.

Then on September 1, on a day when 14 people tested positive in New Zealand to Covid, a woman in her 20s and another in her 30s, who were in managed isolation and who arrived from India on the same flight, were both found to have the infection.

Three days later on September 4 two children aged under 9, and who were family members of previously identified cases on the flight, tested positive at the Auckland Jet Park quarantine facility.

Two more cases were linked to the flight at the weekend.

Another child linked to a previously identified case tested positive on Saturday and a man in his 20s who had been staying in an Auckland isolation facility tested positive on Sunday.

The Health Ministry said he was a close contact of an existing confirmed case and tested positive following routine testing around day 12 of his stay. He is now in quarantine.

Yesterday a pair of additional cases were added to the tally. Both were detected through testing in managed isolation and quarantine facilities.

The first was a boy and the second a woman in her 20s. Both arrived from India on August 23.

They were each a close contact of separate previously reported confirmed cases.

There are now 118 active cases in New Zealand. Of those, 41 are imported cases in quarantine facilities.

A further 77 are community cases.

There are now 1425 cases of Covid19 in New Zealand.