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One new case of Covid - a child in managed isolation

Author
NZ Herald,
Publish Date
Thu, 16 Jul 2020, 1:12PM
Photo / File
Photo / File

One new case of Covid - a child in managed isolation

Author
NZ Herald,
Publish Date
Thu, 16 Jul 2020, 1:12PM

New Zealand has one new case of Covid-19 today - a child in managed isolation.

Today's case is the child of two people previously reported as having Covid-19.

They arrived in New Zealand from Italy on July 4. The family is in quarantine at the Commodore Hotel in Christchurch.

Health Minister Chris Hipkins and director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield are giving today's Covid-19 update.

It is 76 days since last the community transmission case, Bloomfield said.

One previously reported case is now considered to have recovered, so the number of active cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand remains at 27.

The total number of confirmed cases is now 1198.

There is no one in New Zealand receiving hospital-level care for Covid-19.

Yesterday New Zealand's laboratories completed 2899 tests, and 726 of those were taken at managed isolation or quarantine facilities. That brings the total number of tests completed to date to 436,233.

The NZ Covid Tracer app has now recorded 607,000 registrations after a "flurry" of Kiwis downloading it overnight.

Hipkins said there had been 11,000 new registrations of the app.

He was happy to hear this. He said for contact tracing to be effective, people need to know where they have been.

Bloomfield said there is no cost of people to be tested for Covid-19.

Anyone wanting advice on getting a test should ring Healthline, he said.

Bloomfield said it was good to see the number of Covid-19 tracing app downloads increase so significantly - but he said he would like to see more.

He said the Government is exploring getting a bluetooth function to help with contact tracing.Yesterday, they announced an update to the testing criteria to better define who should be tested and expected it would get the number processed daily to about 4000.

Bloomfield and Hipkins implored New Zealanders to download and use the NZ Covid Tracer app.

Daily poster scans have remained minimal at about 10,000 a day.

That equates to 0.2 per cent of the population, based on the generous assumption each scan is one person using the app.

On average, each of the 596,000 people who've downloaded the app have used it 2.3 times.

Bloomfield said the app was "an adjunct" to the contact tracing system, which will be scaled up by the end of next month to make 20,000 phone calls per day.

Bloomfield said downloading the app would mean the Health Ministry would have up-to-date contact details, which would greatly help tracing efforts.

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