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National | Ministry of Health

Rotorua's new community cases outnumber today's Auckland cases; Auckland MIQ worker tests positive

There are 29 new community cases of Covid-19 across Aotearoa today.

Fourteen of these cases are in Rotorua, ahead of Auckland which is reporting 11 new community cases today.

The Ministry of Health says 11 of the Rotorua cases are linked to previously reported cases and investigations are underway to determine any links for the unlinked cases.

Today's remaining community cases are in Northland which has two new cases, and the Bay of Plenty and Wellington which both have one new case each.

The Northland cases are both in Kaikohe and the Bay of Plenty case is in Western BOP.

The ministry, which says there are currently four active cases in Northland, reports that the new Kaikohe cases are from the same household and are in isolation. "Investigations are underway to determine how they are linked to the current outbreak."

The Western BOP case is linked to a previously reported case and was already isolating when they tested positive, according to the ministry.

The Wellington City case is a household contact of a previously reported case and was also already isolating when they tested positive.

Auckland MIQ worker tests positive

Today there are 25 people at the border with Covid-19. However, the ministry is not saying how many have the Omicron variant, simply stating in their Saturday report that "New Zealand continues to see many border cases arriving from overseas, reflecting the growing number of Omicron cases globally."

The new border cases are arrivals from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Fiji, France, India, Nepal, Singapore, the UK and the USA between 4 and 12 January.

This comes as the ministry reports that an Auckland based MIQ worker returned a positive result for Covid-19 during routine testing late Friday afternoon and is currently in isolation.

The ministry says, "Whole genome sequencing is being carried out to determine what variant the infection is and the results will be reported in tomorrow’s 1pm Covid-19 update."

Investigations are said to be underway to determine if the infection originated from the community or the facility.

"Household contacts of the MIQ worker all returned negative tests last night."

The ministry says the worker is fully vaccinated and up-to-date with regular testing.

Hospital

Twenty-nine people are in hospital today with Covid-19. Twelve are in Middlemore and eight are in Auckland, while there are five in North Shore and four in Tauranga.

The average age of the cases is 47.

Two people are in ICU, one in Middlemore and another person in Tauranga.

Of the current hospitalisations (for the northern region wards only), the ministry says 7 cases (29.2%) are unvaccinated or not eligible, 8 cases (33.3%) are partially immunised, 8 cases (33.3%) are fully vaccinated, and the vaccination status of one case (4.2%) is unknown.