New Zealand

New Zealand has 82 new COVID-19 cases

April 4, 2020 10:23 am

The empty streets in New Zealand [Source: Kingsley Abbott]

Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield has confirmed that New Zealand has 82 new COVID-19 cases.

There are 52 confirmed with 30 probable cases of COVID-19, Bloomfield says.

New Zealand now has 950 confirmed and probable cases.

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Bloomfield said there are 10 significant clusters.

In Auckland, around Marist school there are 60 associated cases, in Bluff, around a wedding, 55 cases, and in Matamata 54 cases.

There were 3631 tests done yesterday, for a total of 33,116 tests so far.

At this stage, 127 people have recovered, Bloomfield said.

Some 300,000 new nasal swabs are due to be delivered in the coming week, he said.

About one per cent of cases are from community transmission.

Bloomfield expects that number to rise.

He said during the past week, there had been a high level of lockdown compliance across the country, but a new notice will be provided to let people know what an acceptable bubble is.

Director of Public Health Caroline McElnay said there has been no change to the Government’s recovery condition – when 10 days have passed since the onset of symptoms and 48 hours after a person is symptom-free.

She said the Government is watching advice from the World Health Organisation for people being required to wear masks when they are out and about.

She said there are areas where wearing a mask is unhelpful – for example, sometimes it leads to people touching their face more, she said.

That is unhelpful, she said.

She said the wait time for Healthline was an average of five minutes. She said the service received 14,700 calls yesterday.

Bloomfield said there “may well” be a drop in testing over the weekend because people are less likely to go out.

He said lab capacity around the country continued to be bolstered.

McElnay said the Government is waiting on advice from the WHO as to whether people should be required to wear face masks outside.

This is the requirement in the US – but Bloomfield said the US was in a different position to New Zealand, with much wider community transmission.

“We’re not in that position.”

Bloomfield said he has been approached by Maori academics who asked the Government to provide a more detailed breakdown of ethnicity.

He said the Government has more capacity than it needs around testing for the virus – and added that was deliberate.

Some 17 per cent of the case is still being investigated, he said.

So far, just one person has died from COVID-19.

But the global death toll approaches 60,000 and there are now more than one million confirmed cases of Covid-19 around the world.

Yesterday, Bloomfield confirmed there were 71 new cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand.

That was made up of 22 new probable cases and 49 confirmed.

Bloomfield revealed New Zealand had the capacity for up to 5400 tests a day.

He expects the number of tests done each day to continuing increase in the coming days and weeks.

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[Source: NZ Herald]