There are 13 new cases of Covid-19 in the Delta community outbreak, bringing the total to 996.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield gave the update in a press conference on Thursday.
Among the new cases is a truck driver who crosses the Auckland boundary doing deliveries, stocking supermarkets, Ardern said. Their contact is “limited” to drop-offs and deliveries.
Bloomfield said the driver was tested after being identified as a household contact of another case.
The truck driver went to Hamilton, Cambridge and Tauranga. It is unclear yet whether this was during the period that the person was infectious.
The driver was last tested on August 22.
There “may well” be exposure events linked to the case, but these may not necessarily become locations of interest, he said. Any locations of interest will be published on the Ministry of Health website.
It was unfortunate the person was doing their work before they were identified as a contact of a case, but there is “no evidence” they did anything wrong, Ardern said.
Of the new cases reported on Thursday, all were identified in Auckland, and three are yet to be epidemiologically linked to the existing cluster.
To date, there have been 979 cases in the outbreak in Auckland, and 17 in Wellington.
Of those in Auckland, 445 have been deemed recovered. There are just two active cases remaining in Wellington.
Of the cases reported on Wednesday, five (42 per cent) were infectious while in the community, leading to exposure events.
In total, 10 cases in the past fortnight have not yet been epidemiologically linked to the outbreak.
There continue to be nine epidemiologically linked sub-clusters.
The three largest are the Māngere church group, with 381 cases, secondary community transmission associated with the Māngere church group, with 164, and the Birkdale social cluster associated with Case A, with 77 cases.
There are ten epidemiologically unlinked sub-clusters – one more than the day prior.
There are 19 people in hospitals across the Auckland region with Covid-19. Four are on ventilators in intensive care or high dependency care units.
