Six new cases of COVID-19 have been recorded in New Zealand over the last 24 hours, the Ministry of Health has revealed – none of which are in the community.

The new cases all tested positive in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities on around day three of their mandatory 14-day stay, a press release sent to media on Thursday says.

No new community cases have been detected in the community since last Friday, six days ago.

Four of the new MIQ cases arrived in the country from India on October 24, and one landed here from the Netherlands via Singapore a day prior. The Ministry of Health is still seeking arrival information on the sixth case.

Meanwhile, the crew on cargo ship the Ken Rei, on which a marine engineer who later tested positive worked, have returned negative results for a second time after they were tested for COVID-19 on Wednesday.

This means the ship is now able to depart Napier and head to Tauranga.

The Ministry of Health also provided an update on a Kiwi child who returned a weak positive result after being tested in Japan last Friday. It says it is working with its Japanese counterpart but suspects it is a historical case or a false-positive result.

Further details will be provided when they become available, the ministry says.

Two previously reported cases have recovered in the last day which, combined with the six new cases, take the number of active cases in New Zealand to 70.
The total number of confirmed and probable cases now stands at 1949.

Laboratories processed another 7403 tests for COVID-19, bringing the total number of tests completed to date to 1,083,230.