COVID UPDATE – AUCKLAND BOUNDARIES TO REMAIN CLOSED – STUDENT AT MANGATANGI SCHOOL TESTS POSITIVE
Written by John Grant on September 30, 2021
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has set a clear expectation at today’s 1pm news conference that Cabinet will not remove the current boarder around Auckland.
Cabinet will consider next Monday whether to lower levels for Auckland from 3 to 2 and the rest of New Zealand to potentially drop from level 2 to level 1. However, the decision to maintain internal border restrictions will come as a significant blow to tens of thousands of people have applied for exemptions to leave and the many businesses reliant on moving people in and out of Auckland.
Ardern stated “What is not in consideration is removing that boundary,” during the Beehive news conference. She was later asked what criteria would need to be met to open the internal border, she simply said: “The boundary is not the first cab off the rank at that meeting,”.
Nineteen new cases today, including 18 in Auckland and 16 who were linked or expected to be inked to other cases. He said there were two new active sub clusters, with five households in one of the subclusters and one other in West Auckland.
News of a positive case in day 12 testing from students attending Mangatangi school will cause some anxiousness in the area.
There was also one case of a worker at a MIQ facility in Auckland. It was not clear whether they caught it from a recent arrival or from the community outbreak in the surrounding suburbs.
Bloomfield said two new ‘suburbs of interest’, Henderson and Papakura, had been added to the list, while Otara had been removed.
In good news for Tauranga and Mt Maunganui, the latest wastewater results from testing in the last 24 hours has been negative. This followed an earlier weak positive result in the Tauranga area.
