There are 35 new community cases of Covid-19 ahead of the government's alert level announcement this afternoon.
Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
In a statement, the Ministry of Health said 33 of the new cases are in Auckland and two are in Wellington.
That brings the total number of cases in the community outbreak to 107.
All of the cases have or are being transferred safely to a managed isolation facility, under strict infection prevention and control procedures, including the use of full PPE, it said.
"As previously indicated, it's not unexpected to see a rise in daily case numbers at this stage. At its peak last year, New Zealand had a daily total of 89 new cases."
The total number of community cases in Auckland is now 99 and Wellington's number of community cases has increased to eight.
"Of the 107 cases in the cluster, 72 are already epidemiologically linked to other community cases identified in the outbreak. Investigations are continuing to determine whether and how the remaining 35 cases are linked to the outbreak, however most have a plausible link on initial assessment. For example, people were at a location of interest. We will continue to release this information and new locations of interest as it becomes available," the ministry said.
The ministry said ESR is also continuing to run whole genome sequencing on cases. Yesterday 29 samples were sequenced and all were confirmed as being linked to the Auckland outbreak, it said.
As well as the new community cases, there are three new cases in recent returnees in managed isolation facilities.
The total number of active cases being managed in New Zealand is 154.
Since 1 January 2021, there have been 123 historical cases, out of a total of 880 cases.
The total number of confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic is 2698.
Photo: Ministry of Health
The government will announce any lockdown changes at 4pm but has already signalled Auckland is likely to remain in lockdown a while longer.
The number of community cases of Covid-19 grew by 21 yesterday, 20 in Auckland and one in Wellington, taking the total number in the current outbreak to 72.
Meanwhile, a Covid-19 modeller says he expects to see the national lockdown have an impact on new case numbers by the end of the week.
