Covid-19: No new community cases in New Zealand; Western Australia and Brisbane Airport updates
There are four new cases of Covid-19 in recent returnees in managed isolation facilities and no new cases to report in the community today.
The Ministry of Health says there is also one new historical case to report. Historical cases are not considered to be infectious.
This case arrived from Japan on April 25 and is currently in a managed isolation facility in Christchurch.
Of the four new cases, one case arrived from Japan on April 25. Two cases arrived from Qatar via Australia on April 27.
The fourth cases arrived from Pakistan via the United Arab Emirates on April 30.
Four previously reported cases have recovered, meaning the total number of active cases in New Zealand today is 24.
The total number of confirmed cases remains at 2,262.
Since January 1 2021, there have been 50 historical cases, out of a total of 446 cases.
The total number of tests processed by laboratories to date is 2,026,948.
On Friday 4,843 tests were processed, and 3,257 were processed on Saturday. The seven-day rolling average up to yesterday is 3,729 tests processed.
Western Australia update
As announced late last night, Western Australian health officials have advised a worker at a Perth managed isolation facility had tested positive for Covid-19, along with two of their housemates.
The Ministry of Health carried out a rapid public health assessment on the impact for New Zealand last night and, after working with airlines, all direct passenger flights from Perth to New Zealand were paused.
Western Australia health officials are meeting this morning to decide whether they will implement further restrictions or a full lockdown. Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan said publicly yesterday said that a full lockdown was not necessary at that stage because Perth had still been subject to earlier Covid-19 restrictions including mask-wearing and social distancing during most of the worker’s infectious period. However, he said a lockdown could be enforced if the situation changed.
Due to the time difference with Western Australia, further information is expected to be released about this later today.
The Ministry’s contact tracing team are today contacting those travellers who have arrived in New Zealand from Perth since April 27 and advising them to check the Western Australian Government website for locations of interest (https://www.wa.gov.au/organisation/covid-communications/covid-19-coronavirus-locations-visited-confirmed-cases) and contact Healthline if they were at any of those locations at the time of interest.
Brisbane Airport green zone breach update:
Contact tracing teams have identified there were 397 passengers aboard the three flights which left Brisbane International Airport after the green zone breach on Thursday April 29.
All but two of those people have now been contacted and asked to check the Queensland Government website for locations of interest. Attempts to contact the remaining two are continuing today.
To date, 27 people have got in touch with Healthline to say they were in the locations of interest at the relevant time. Those people are considered casual plus contacts and have been asked to self-isolate and get tested five days after their exposure.
The remaining passengers who weren’t at the locations of interest are advised to monitor their health and if symptoms develop, call Healthline and get a test.
The risk from this event continues to be assessed as low.
