Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield provided the latest on Covid-19 case numbers and vaccinations.

It follows the decision to keep Auckland at level 4 and the rest of the country at level 2 for another week.

Today's Update:

• There are 15 new cases in the community, all in Auckland. This brings the total outbreak to 970,  
•  953 cases are in Auckland (382 of whom have recovered); 17 are in Wellington (12 of whom have recovered) 
• Of today’s cases are all household contacts and epidemiologically linked.  
• Eight (26%) of yesterday’s cases have exposure events, 23 (74%) of yesterday’s cases were in isolation throughout the period they were infectious 
• The unlinked case from yesterday has now also been epidemiologically linked. 10 cases from the outbreak remain unlinked. 
• 22 in hospital, 4 in ICU, all requiring ventilation 
• There are 9 epidemiologically linked subclusters. The 2 largest subclusters are the Mangere church group: 381; and Birkdale social network cluster: 77. 
  There are nine epidemiologically unlinked subclusters. 
• There have been 9,279 in the last 24 hours, 7,823 have been in Auckland. 
• The priority is on testing as many people as possible from the Auckland suburbs of Massey, Favona, Papatoetoe, Otara and Manurewa, Bloomfield said. 
• Families with children are encouraged to get tested all together. 
• Surveillance testing of essential workers continues across Auckland, including people in healthcare, emergency services, transport workers and supermarket workers. 
• 15,685 essential workers have been tested across Auckland - none with positive results. 
• Contact tracing efforts are focussing on 1242 contacts under "active management". Number of contacts of active management is now a small number, Bloomfield said, after negative test results and exposure dates from more than 18 days ago. 
• Bloomfield reminded people crossing the border to let the tester know this was the purpose of them seeking a covid test 
• A positive wastewater sample was taken from Pukekohe. Four people who were in quarantine had returned home, which is believed to be the reason. People in the area are still advised to get tested, Bloomfield said. 
• Bloomfield said Counties Manukau DHB is safe and people should not hesitate to receive emergency care there. Patients who may have been exposed to the virus are kept separate from other patients, he said. Middlemore Hospital is testing a higher rate of patients out of caution, he said. 
• There is capacity for 220,000 vaccines to be administered in Auckland this week, Ardern said. 
• It's so important to get vaccinated as soon as possible, Ardern said. There are around 90,000 available spaces at Book My Vaccine this week, she said. More than 100 GPs and 30 pharmacies administering vaccines in Auckland. 
• Some park and ride vaccine centres can carry out more than 5,000 vaccines in a day, Ardern said. 
• A pop up clinic at Auckland University began on Saturday at the Owen Glenn Building and has its last day today. 
• Ardern said they are working hard for disabled people to be vaccinated and the clinic at Papakura Marae is open all week. Bookings aren't required there. 
• The first rollout of portable vaccine buses will be rolled out in Auckland on Thursday - expanding the fleet from 6 to 12 in coming weeks, Ardern said. 
• Moving school holiday dates has been under consideration for a while, Ardern said, but it's about the wider consideration of the workforce. 
• Bloomfield said there hasn't been a big spike in the use of the 1737 helpline number, but urges people who are experiencing mental health issues to use it. He said he's monitoring the use of mental health services.