There have been no confirmed cases of Covid19 reported in the South Island today. But could that change? Here’s what we know so far:

Dr Ashley Bloomfield said this afternoon “the vast majority of contacts are located in the Auckland and Waikato regions, with a small proportion in other areas throughout the rest of the North Island, and the South Island.”

He said “we know we are dealing with an outbreak that is not just isolated to Auckland, with cases in Wellington. While they were picked up quickly they came into contact with a case on Sunday and obviously we were in lockdown by Tuesday.”

“We need to be vigilant. Contract tracing shows that we have hundreds who were at locations of interest who we know leave an hour isolating outside of Auckland. That includes in the South Island, so we do have people who have been at locations of interest across the country.”

“Finally because we are in day three of the lockdown, we are finding positive cases and the infectious period is reaching back into the period before we went into lockdown. Soon it will stop being the case, and it will definitely help us get the outbreak under control. And help us determine the edges of the outbreak. Until then, we do not quite know the full scale of this Delta outbreak.”

When asked about an unconfirmed case in West Melton, Dr Bloomfield replied “sorry, I have nothing on that.”

Just after 6pm, a Ministry of Health senior spokesman said he understands from Canterbury DHB that, at this time, there are no reports of an active COVID-19 case in the (Canterbury) region.

 “The Ministry doesn’t comment on speculation. We do comment on confirmed cases and these numbers are provided each day in our 1pm statement or press conference, or as soon as practicable.”

Earlier, at this afternoon’s press conference, Dr Bloomfield said “I couldn’t tell you specifically for the South Island, but outside of Auckland it is in the hundreds (contacts) keeping in mind a large number of locations of interest, many people come up from Coromandel to the Waikato region, for example. But from the heat maps I have seen, they are dotted through the south.”

Professor Michael Plank from Te Pūnaha Matatini and the University of Canterbury said “extending Alert Level 4 nationally for another four days is the right decision to ensure this outbreak of the delta variant has minimal opportunities to spread further into the community.”

“There are grounds for cautious optimism. It now looks likely that we detected this outbreak around 10 days after it first entered the community, which limits the time the virus has had to spread. Most of the cases found in the last two days are linked to the main cluster and not mystery cases. This is a reassuring sign that our contact tracing system is starting to work its way towards the edges of the cluster.”