Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield has announced 5 new cases in New Zealand in the last 24-hours, three in the community linked to the Auckland cluster and two from overseas.

He says the three community cases are all linked to the Mt Roskill Evangelical church, which has been epidemiologically linked to the Auckland cluster.

The two imported cases were detected at the managed isolation facility at the Rydges Hotel in Rotorua via routine testing around day three.

There are 3192 close contacts identified of the initial Auckland cluster since August 11 of which 2992 have been contacted and moved to quarantine. 

104 people of the initial cluster and household contacts have been moved into quarantine of which 75 returned a Covid positive test. The number of positive cases are declining as there have been some recoveries as well. 

As of Wednesday, September 2, seven people are in the hospital of whom five are in the ward and two in ICU. One at Auckland city, two at Middlemore, North Shore and Waikato respectively.  

There have been eight new recoveries reported, all of whom are from the community. 

With five new cases and eight new recoveries, there are 129 active cases of whom 35 imported and 94 from the community. NZ total confirmed case increases to 1406. 

Yesterday 10934 tests were done making total tests done till date to 777,560. 

More to come.