There are 49 new cases to report in the community today. All of these are in Auckland. Northland will move to alert level 3 from midnight tonight, PM confirms.

There is a total of 736 cases now in the outbreak, 11 have recovered.

709 of these in Auckland and 16 in Wellington. There are further four cases to report in recent returnees in our managed isolation facilities.

 Dr Ashley Bloomfield said “this latest lower number is encouraging and does show our alert level 4 measures are working even against the delta strain.”

 “As I mentioned yesterday, the numbers could still bounce around a little, however, the latest reassessment of the effective reproduction rate shows that based on data through to the 31st of August, there was a 95% probability this was under one.”

 “Analysis of yesterday’s cases shows that 85% were contacts of known cases and 56% were household contacts who were already isolating.”

 36% of yesterday’s cases, the ones announced yesterday, were considered to be infectious in the community. That is higher than the 25% the previous day.

 There are 42 cases now in hospital, all in the Auckland area.

 Of these, six are in ICU or a high dependency unit and three are being ventilated.

 “The growing number of people in hospitals is a stark reminder of the seriousness of infection with Covid19.  My thoughts are with those who are in hospital.”

 “As of 9:00 AM today, we had 37,359 individual contacts formally identified and in our national contact tracing system. Of these, 30,283 or 81% had direct contact by our team and were self-isolating.”

Most of the balance had already been identified because they had had contact with Healthline or through being added place of interest around 86% of all contacts have already had a test in the system.

 On wastewater testing, there are no unexpected results to report today.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said “we continue to see cases of in-household transmission. Lockdown and isolation is really supporting us as we try and stop the spread beyond that”

 “We do, however, just need to make sure we’re sticking to the plan and sticking to it firmly.”

“This is where I want to add a message. If you are a contact, If you have been in a location of interest and advised to stay home as a result, you absolutely must do so, if you don’t, you’re risking the health of those around you and you risk prolonging this lockdown for yourself and for others. Now, while we haven’t seen widespread evidence of this being an issue, it is such an important message. I will keep repeating it.”