There are 83 new cases of COVID-19 in the New Zealand community today; 82 are in Auckland, one is in Wellington who is a close contact of an existing case and was in isolation. This brings the total number of cases in the community outbreak to 511.

The total number of community cases in Auckland is now 496 and in Wellington it is 15.

There are 453 cases that have been clearly epidemiologically-linked to another case or sub-cluster, and a further 58 for which links are yet to be fully established.

There are currently seven epidemiologically-linked subclusters identified within this outbreak. The two largest clusters are the Birkdale Social Network cluster associated with Case A (68 confirmed cases), and the Mangere church cluster (237 confirmed cases).

Of the current community cases, 34 cases are in hospital – 32 are in a stable condition on a ward and two cases are in a stable condition in ICU. Three cases are in North Shore Hospital, 17 are in Middlemore Hospital, 13 are in Auckland City Hospital, and one is in Wellington Regional Hospital.

The total number of active cases being managed in New Zealand is currently 551.

There are two new cases in recent returnees in managed isolation facilities.

Since 1 January 2021, there have been 124 historical cases, out of a total of 1,290 cases.

The total number of confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic is 3,108.

Amberlea Home and Hospital Care Facility (Algie’s Bay)
All 13 patients in the dementia ward, where the positive case worked, have returned negative results.

Whole Genome Sequencing

ESR has now run whole genome sequencing on samples taken from around 343 community cases. Analysis of these samples has determined they are all genomically linked to the current outbreak.

Wastewater
There are no new unexpected detections to report.
Following detection of COVID-19 in samples collected from Christchurch on 21, 23 and 25 August, samples were collected from five sites within Christchurch on 26 August. These have now returned negative results and further samples are being collected for analysis today and tomorrow from a further nine sites across Christchurch.

COVID-19 was found in a sample collected from Warkworth on 27 August, this follows detections on 17, 22 and 24 August. The virus was also detected in samples collected across Auckland, and from Wellington (Moa Point) on 27 August.

Samples from 125 locations during this outbreak have been analysed. There are 86 locations in the North Island and 39 locations in South Island. These cover an estimated 3.9 million people, and over 95 percent of the New Zealand population is connected to reticulated wastewater systems.

Contact tracing
As of 10am today, 32,771 individual contacts have been identified and around 85% have had a test.