There are seven new confirmed cases of COVID-19 to report in New Zealand today.

One is an imported case – a woman in her 20s who arrived in New Zealand on August 22 from Turkey via London and Hong Kong. She has been staying in MIQ at the Sudima in Christchurch and tested positive for COVID-19 around day 3 of her time in managed isolation.

The other six cases are in the community, and they have all been linked to the Auckland cluster.

Five cases are household contacts of previously reported cases, and one is linked via their workplace.

By this morning our contact tracing team had identified 2,455 close contacts of cases, of which 2,404 have been contacted and are self-isolating, and we are in the process of contacting the rest.

There are 159 people linked to the community cluster at the Auckland quarantine facility, which includes 85 people who have tested positive for COVID-19 and their household contacts.

Today there are 10 people in hospital with COVID-19.

Two people are in Auckland City Hospital, four people are in Middlemore, three people are in North Shore Hospital, and one person is in Waikato Hospital. Eight of those people are on a ward, and one person in Middlemore is in ICU, as is one person in North Shore.

Fifteen people are now considered to have recovered from COVID-19, which brings the number of active cases in New Zealand to 126, of which 11 are imported cases.

Our total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 is now 1,351, which is the number we report to the World Health Organization.

Yesterday laboratories processed 9,257 tests for COVID-19, which brings the total number of tests completed to date to 719,320.

Mt Roskill Evangelical Fellowship church

There are now eight people associated with the Mt Roskill Evangelical Fellowship Church who have tested positive for COVID-19.

All eight cases have epidemiological links to each other as they attended common events.

Three of these cases have been genomically linked to the Auckland community cluster, and the epidemiological link to the main cluster remains under investigation.

Anyone who attended the following events should get tested as soon as possible.

• Services held at the church in Stoddard Road on the 8th, 9th or 11th of August
• A wedding held at the church on Friday 7 August.

Anyone who attended these events and who is currently unwell, or has experienced any signs of COVID-19 in the past two weeks, should contact Healthline on 0800 358 5453 and let them know that you attended one of these events. They will provide further advice.

Mt Albert Grammar

A second student at Mt Albert Grammar has been confirmed as having COVID-19 – they were infectious more than two weeks ago.

All staff and students should be tested for COVID-19, if they have not been tested since August 17, as a precautionary measure to ensure there are not any undiagnosed cases in the school community.

The school has sent a letter to staff and students with more details.

The school has taken all reasonable steps to follow health advice and minimise risk, and it will be open on August 31.

Contact Tracing Assurance Committee report

The Ministry of Health welcomes today's release of the report by the Contact Tracing Assurance Committee (CTAC).

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said Sir Brian Roche had led a very thorough assessment of what is a critical part of our response to COVID-19.

‘COVID-19 has seen the entire health sector face unprecedented challenges however it also represents an opportunity for continuous improvement in our practice.

‘While we know that there will always be room for improvement, I am very pleased with what has already been achieved to ensure that New Zealand maintains a gold-standard in contact tracing.

‘Our experience around the current Auckland outbreak demonstrates the progress our contact tracing service, and the people working in it, have made.

‘The report also signals the improvements in COVID-19 technology, particularly around upgrades of the Tracer app and planned trials of a new Bluetooth COVIDcard and smartphone-based Bluetooth function.’

NZ COVID Tracer

NZ COVID Tracer has now recorded 1,867,800 registered users.

There have been 326,294 QR codes created, and over the last week, an average of 1.5 million poster scans have been recorded each day.

The Ministry of Health is working closely with the Ministry of Transport to help public transport, taxis and other small passenger services get their QR codes by 3 September.

A number of public transport operators are already using the QR codes, including Metlink in Wellington, which has a unique code for each of its train carriages. Many taxi businesses also already have their QR codes.

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