There are 28 new community cases of Covid-19 today bringing the total number of cases to 764.

One of the cases is in Wellington and the rest are in Auckland. There are also four new border cases in managed isolation and quarantine.

Of yesterdays cases 35 per cent of these have had exposure events in the community and 65 per cent were in isolation during their infectious period.

There are eight subclusters in this outbreak the largest subclusters is the Mangere church group with 347 cases.

Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson says the numbers are encouraging but the job is not yet done.

"We must continue to be vigilant," he says.

Robertson also gave further details about the man who escaped a quarantine facility in Auckland yesterday.

He says there are no public locations of interest associated with the man who escaped MIQ in the early hours of yesterday morning.

The man was first tested as a close contact of another case. He was informed of the positive result at 1.22pm on Wednesday.

At 3.37pm he was contacted again by public health and he agreed to be transferred to MIQ, which happened at 6.18pm

CCTV showed him leaving his room before departing the facility at 1.07am.

He then walked home but there was no contact with others "as far as can be ascertained", says Robertson.

Police and defence force staff checked his room when they were alerted mid-morning on Thursday.

They then went to his house and took him into custody at 2.05pm

Roberston says the advice was there was low risk to public safety during the incident.

He says it is a regrettable situation that is being thoroughly investigated.

Lockdown support

Roberston also spoke about economic support during the lockdown, and says IRD had approved almost 150,000 payments under a business support scheme.

Ministers had agreed to change restrictive settings of the resurgence support subsidy. Businesses can apply under the new criteria from next week.

On the wage subsidy, 242,600 payments have been approved this outbreak, says Robertson.

The applications for the second fortnight of the subsidy opened today.

Robertson met with the NZ banker's association yesterday to discuss support for small businesses.

There was no need for a government-backed scheme regarding mortgage referrals at the moment, he says.

Robertson says when it comes to the economic impacts of the lockdown, it's worth remembering we've been through one before and we recovered.

EARLIER: Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson and Director of Public Health Caroline McElnay will provide an update on the current Covid-19 outbreak.

They are expected to be live from Wellington at 1pm.

What we know so far:

Yesterday there were 49 new cases of Covid-19 in the community, with all of these cases in Auckland.

This brings the total number of cases to 725 with 709 in Auckland and 16 in Wellington. There were also four new border cases to report in managed isolation and quarantine.

There are 42 cases in hospital with 8 in North Shore, 19 in Middlemore and 15 Auckland. Six of the cases are in ICU or HDU.

Dr Ashley Bloomfield says the lower cases numbers are encouraging and show the alert level 4 measures in place are working.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says a positive trend emerging is the rolling day average of cases is declining it was 61 yesterday and was 77 five days ago.

There are also fewer cases that were infectious in the community, of the 49 cases announced yesterday only seven were infectious in the community, says Ardern.