The Katikati community is breathing a sigh of relief following a Covid-19 scare.

A person who tested positive for the virus on Saturday, returned a negative result on Sunday night.

The Bay of Plenty case, which came after a person travelled to from Auckland region, has illustrated the great lengths the small town has undertaken to keep their community safe.

Katch Katikati's town promotions manager Jacqui Knight knows all too well about the recent scare.

She is still self-isolating, awaiting the result of a test, having been in the Hammer Hardware location of interest at the same time as the initially positive test result.

She says the community can learn some lessons from this.

'Keep scanning,” she says.

'I knew I had been in Hammer Hardware last week but I didn't know exactly what day so I could look back on my tracer app and see which was really good. So it is really important that people keep scanning and get vaccinated.”

Whilst she admits letting out a sigh of relief, Jacqui is still remaining cautious, and is not yet willing to celebrate the negative result, given the unpredictability of the Delta variant.

But she is pleased to see everyone in Katikati came together over the weekend.

'It is certainly a positive thing to have and not the feeling that there is more of the virus out there and more contamination going on,” she says.

'I heard on the news that more than 800 people in total in Katikati went and got tested or vaccinated yesterday which is a fantastic response for such a small town.

'I think everyone is keen to nip it in the bud and do everything we can to make sure it doesn't affect local businesses as much as possible. They struggle at the best of times so to be landed with this would be a double blow really.”

A Katikati resident says they're very relieved after the news regarding the Katikati case broke this morning.

'The town was bustling on Friday with families and members of the community down at Diggelmann Park for the 2021 Festival of Arts, but once news broke of the case it became a ghost town.

'It was a worrying time as the places of interest took a while to be released and due to it being such a small town, residents wanted to know exactly where the case had been.

'Stores that hadn't been listed, such as our popular Robert Harris Café were closing which really put everyone on edge,” they say.

Many stores in the Katikati Township shut their doors at the weekend as a precaution to the unsettling news on Saturday, with Countdown Katikati being one of them.

A Countdown spokesperson says 'as we've done with all of our stores that have been locations of interest, we have followed all our usual health and safety procedures, including closing our Katikati store for a deep clean yesterday afternoon.

'This is in addition to the thorough cleaning that is undertaken during each day, which has been further increased with the changing alert levels we have seen since August.

'While it has been an unsettling weekend for our team and the local community, the Katikati case has since returned a negative result, which will be welcome news for everyone.

'We're really grateful to the local community for their patience and support - it has meant a lot to our Katikati team.

'The store is back open today and we'd encourage customers to keep up the good work by continuing to scan in and wear their masks whenever they are in store,” says the spokesperson.