Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield [Source: RNZ]

New Zealand has recorded just 29 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, but the Prime Minister says a decision on changing the alert level will only be made shortly before the lockdown ends.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said there are 23 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 6 probable cases in New Zealand today. That brings the total number of cases to 1239.

There have been no additional deaths, but 14 people are in hospital, with four in ICU at North Shore, Middlemore and Dunedin hospitals.

Dr Bloomfield said 317 people have now recovered from the coronavirus.

New Zealand has recorded just 29 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, but the Prime Minister says a decision on changing the alert level will only be made shortly before the lockdown ends.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said there are 23 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 6 probable cases in New Zealand today. That brings the total number of cases to 1239.

There have been no additional deaths, but 14 people are in hospital, with four in ICU at North Shore, Middlemore and Dunedin hospitals.

Dr Bloomfield said 317 people have now recovered from the coronavirus.

Watch the media conference live here:

Dr Bloomfield said 41 percent of cases are travel related, 44 related to close contacts and 2 percent community transmission. Thirteen percent are still under investigation.

There are still 12 clusters, the three largest are the wedding in Bluff with 87 cases, Marist College with 84 and Matamata with 66.

The daily numbers of new cases of COVID-19 have been slowly dropping this week. There were 50 new probable and confirmed cases reported yesterday, with 54 on Tuesday and 67 on Monday.

Despite the drop in new cases, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made it clear the lockdown will not end before the four-week period is up.