LIVE: Covid-19 media update

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield.

UPDATE: New Zealand currently has 81 active cases of Covid-19, all in managed isolation.

The Ministry of Health is reoprting an additional seven new positive Covid cases in MIQ since the last update on Tuesday.

The seven-day rolling average of new cases detected at the border is five.

The total number of confirmed cases is 2175.

Since January 1, there have been 43 historical cases, out of a total of 363 cases.

Auckland February cluster

On April 6, public health officials classified the Auckland February cluster as closed.

This is based on yesterday being 28 days after the last identified case in the cluster was classified as recovered.

"The first cases in this cluster were reported to the Ministry of Health on February 13," says a statement from the Ministry of Health.

"The cluster was made up of 15 community cases.

"All the cases in the cluster were able to be linked epidemiologically and through Whole Genome Sequencing."

The source of the outbreak has not been determined.

Testing update

On Tuesday, 3389 tests were processed.

In the past seven days, 24,000 tests have been processed, with a seven-day rolling average up to yesterday of 3,429 tests processed.

The total number of tests processed by laboratories to date is 1,920,966.

Up-to-date information on all testing locations nationwide is available on the Healthpoint website: https://www.healthpoint.co.nz/covid-19/.

Vaccination dashboard

"Our key vaccination statistics are now posted on an online vaccination dashboard, which will be updated on Wednesday each week."

The dashboard provides a snapshot of vaccination progress, including:
· The number of people to receive their first vaccination
· The number of people to receive their second vaccination
· A graph which indicates the number of vaccinations administered each week vs the planned numbers.

"Over the last week we've seen a small gap open between planned and actual vaccinations," says the MOH.

"This is largely due to Easter, with both vaccinators taking a well-earned break and people, understandably, prioritising friends and family over getting a vaccination."

The dashboard also has:
· Vaccinations administered on a given day
· The number of first and second doses administered by individual district health boards
· Vaccinations by ethnicity (Māori, Pacific Peoples, Asian, and European/other and unknown), age and sex.

"We're also reporting on adverse reactions following immunisation," says the MOH.

"Medsafe, New Zealand's medicines regulator, will this afternoon publish its initial report on safety monitoring of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine on its website.

The report will cover reported adverse events following immunisation.

Medsafe will continue to provide updated information each week.

Providing this information, which many other countries are also doing, is standard practice for Medsafe and making it publicly available is part of our commitment to transparency and ensuring people can access this information easily.

NZ Covid Tracer App new version release

The Ministry will be releasing a new version of the NZ Covid Tracer app later this week.

The new features will include:
· the dashboard showing how many days out of the past 14 you've used the app;
· the dashboard showing figures on how many New Zealanders are using the app – the same as the figures released regularly by the Ministry; and,
· a flashlight option for scanning in low light conditions – particularly useful for the winter months ahead.

EARLIER:

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield will be joined by Associate Minister of Health (Māori) Peeni Henare for today's live Covid update.

The pair are due to go live at 1pm.

On Tuesday, the Ministry of Health reported 17 new Covid-19 cases in managed isolation in the last two days.

In a statement released in the afternoon, the ministry said there were no new community cases.

'The seven-day rolling average of new cases detected at the border is four,” says a ministry spokesperson.

An additional four people have now recovered, meaning there are now a total of 74 active cases in New Zealand.

The total number of confirmed cases is 2168.

Since January 1, there have been 43 historical cases, out of a total of 356 cases.

**The numbers above were reported to media on Tuesday.

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