[Source: 1news]

There are 28 new COVID-19 community cases in New Zealand on Thursday, the Ministry of Health has confirmed.

The cases are in Auckland (9), Waikato (3), Bay of Plenty (5), Lakes (2), Hutt (2), the Wairarapa (4) and Canterbury (3).

Two of the three Canterbury cases are linked to a previously reported case, while the third remains under investigation, the Health Ministry said in a statement.

There are 34 people in hospital with the virus. Two of those are in intensive care or a high dependency unit.

In addition, there are 13 Covid-19 cases to report at the border.

Today’s border cases arrived from Sri Lanka (1), Australia (4), India (1), US (3), Singapore (1), Brazil (1), Israel (1) and the UK (1). They all tested positive on routine day 0 to eight testing.

A positive wastewater detection was found in Kawerau, in the Bay of Plenty, on January 10.

The Ministry of Health is warning there will be further locations of interest around Canterbury as Kiwis travelled over the holiday break.

The ministry says an intermittent technical issue with the Covid Tracer app’s notification system meant some individuals who recently scanned into a location of interest received notifications with a delay of around 24 hours.

“The issue affected recent notifications sent out about some of the larger festivals in the past two weeks. The Ministry’s locations of interest page is updated each day and the Ministry recommends it should be regularly checked by the public,” the Health Ministry said.

“The issue has now been resolved.”

On Wednesday New Zealand recorded 28 new community cases of the coronavirus.