There are 102 new community cases of COVID-19 to report today; 94 in Auckland and eight in Waikato.

As at 10am, 62 of these cases are linked – including 30 household contacts – and 40 remain unlinked, with investigations continuing to help determine their connection to the outbreak.

The Ministry has updated its guidance for Allied Health professionals working in settings outside DHBs, clarifying they can all provide services under alert level 3.

There are more than 43 different Allied Health professions which include physiotherapists, chiropractors and osteopaths.

The Ministry has worked with the sector on maintaining a balance between protecting patients and maintaining their general wellbeing. The change will enable roughly 2000 allied health professionals in Auckland alone to continue to see patients, ensuring more people are treated in the community, and preventing some trips to primary care or hospital settings.

Even though these alert level 3 barriers have now been removed, providers must still screen patients, and practice all COVID-19 measures such as appropriate distancing, strict use of infection, prevention and control measures, PPE use and scanning in.
Providers should also continue to offer telehealth services if this is an appropriate alternative.
The Ministry thanks the thousands of hard-working Allied Health professionals throughout the past 20 months.

Auckland update
Testing across Auckland is continuing, with a focus on suburbs with higher positivity rates where the risk of unidentified cases is higher.

People with symptoms, even if they are mild symptoms, and even if they are vaccinated, in New Lynn and the North Shore suburbs of Rosedale, Redvale, and Bayswater should get tested as soon as possible, and isolate until they receive a negative result.

This testing will help to provide assurance that any undetected spread of COVID-19 in these communities is identified as quickly as possible.

For up-to-date information on testing locations in Auckland, visit www.arphs.health.nz/covid19test.

For all testing locations nationwide, visit https://www.healthpoint.co.nz/covid-19/

Auckland Regional Public Health is supporting 151 COVID-19 cases in the community, across 87 households, to safely isolate at home.

Home isolation is part of an interim model initially involving a limited number of people and gives time for primary care such as GPs to be ready to take on case management.

Waikato update
There are eight new cases to report today in the Waikato region, all in the Te Awamutu area. Seven have already been linked to known cases, and the Public Health team plans to speak with the remaining case today.

One of the Waikato cases undertook permitted travel to Hawke’s Bay last Friday prior to becoming confirmed case. The case returned to Te Awamutu before testing positive.

Both contacts have been tested and have returned negative day six results.

Meanwhile, Waikato DHB is continuing to carry out testing throughout the region, to help determine any undetected community spread of COVID-19.
In particular people in the Te Awamutu are urged to get tested if they or anyone in their household has symptoms, or if they have travelled out of Te Awamutu over the past week for work or other activities, whether you have symptoms or not.

Testing locations in and around Waikato are available on the Healthpoint website and the Waikato DHB website.

Vaccination rates in Waikato remained high yesterday with 3,276 people receiving a dose – of these, 1,058 were first doses, and a further 2,218 were second doses. There were also around 3160 swabs taken across the region yesterday.