Testing has found two new cases of Covid-19 in people in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities, and no new community cases, the Ministry of Health says.
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In a written statement, the ministry said the two new cases arrived on the same flight as 10 cases detected yesterday, which travelled from India via UAE.
“These recent positive cases do not necessarily indicate an issue with pre-departure testing, since people may not have been infectious at the time of pre-departure testing,” the ministry said.
“They may have been incubating the virus at the time or be exposed to the virus after being tested.”
The ministry said it did not consider the cases from India as entirely unexpected, given the country was reporting the highest number of daily Covid-19 cases worldwide.
“These cases again underscore the value of having the day 0/1 testing in place. All people arriving into New Zealand must remain in their rooms until those day 0/1 tests results come back.”
A Cybersecurity expert told First Up that his company’s scanning of the Dark Web had picked up discussions about fake Covid-19 test results on New Zealand forums, and the forged certification was easy to find in the covert area of the internet.
And epidemiologist Michael Baker said too many people with the virus were coming into the country, which showed that the pre-departure checks needed to be tightened.
He said better auditing of the certification was needed, and travellers should be asked to provide more information about where they were tested, in their communication with MIQ before they arrived.
Yesterday the Ministry said there were 11 new cases of the people diagnosed with the virus, all in MIQ. All but one of them arrived from India via the United Arab Emirates on Saturday.
