Watch: Chris Hipkins and Dr Ashley Bloomfield provide a COVID-19 update. Credits: Video - Newshub; Image - Getty.
After a short, sharp lockdown, Auckland is back under alert level 2 while the rest of New Zealand has dropped to alert level 1.
The moves comes despite three new community cases of COVID-19 being reported on Wednesday. All three, however, are connected to the original trio from the weekend and there is no evidence yet - either from community testing or wastewater testing - of any wider parallel transmission.
Of the 31 close contacts of the original cases, 30 have tested negative while the last is one of the three new positive cases. The test results of more than 360 casual-plus contacts - many from Papatoetoe High School - remain outstanding, but 1159 have tested negative. Contact tracing is now underway for the three new cases.
Cook Islands refuse flights from Level 2 Auckland
18 Feb, 2021 09:36 AM
2 minutes to read
Air New Zealand has cancelled Saturday s flight over the suspension of the Cook Islands travel bubble. Photo / File
Air New Zealand has cancelled Saturday s flight over the suspension of the Cook Islands travel bubble. Photo / File
NZ Herald
The Cook Islands have continued to refused passengers from New Zealand out of an abundance of caution, following recent community cases of the UK Coronavirus strain in Auckland.
On Wednesday evening the Cook Islands Cabinet called a meeting in response to the New Zealand government s change on alert levels. This meeting focused on the ramifications of the widely reported Covid-19 variant B1.1.7 cases (first detected in the UK) in South Auckland New Zealand, said the Office of the Cook Island s prime minister, Mark Brown.
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