Hipkins ChrisHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Health): One week ago tonight the Prime Minister announced that a new case of COVID-19 had been detected in the community. It had been 102 days since the last evidence of community transmission and the virus had returned. While we worked incredibly hard to prevent this we always knew that it was possible and we planned and prepared for that. Just as we did when COVID-19 first emerged we went hard and we went early.At the same time as the new outbreak was announced we also announced that Auckland was moving to alert level 3 and the rest of the country to alert level 2. Our approach remains the same as it has throughout the global pandemic. We will contain the virus and we will stamp it out. We've done it before and with the combined efforts of our health workers contact tracers lab workers and our whole team of 5 million we can do this again.In the last week we've seen incredible surge testing. There are now 39 designated community testing sites in the wider Auckland region and mobile testing sites are being redeployed to test close contacts as required. More than 100000 tests have been processed over the last five days including a total of 18421 tests that were processed yesterday. That is a remarkable effort. The volume of the tests has been made possible through the pooling of samples the hard work of lab staff and the willingness of people to front up and to get tested and I want to thank everybody who has been involved in that. The sheer number of tests can give the Government and the wider public of New Zealand that confidence and assurance that aside from the current cluster there is no sign of widespread community transmission.The source of this latest outbreak is still under investigation. The immediate focus has been on the border and our managed isolation and quarantine facilities and I want to acknowledge at the outset that testing of staff working at our border has been too slow. It has not met the very clear expectations of Ministers the decisions that Cabinet has made were not implemented in a timely or a robust manner and that is disappointing and frustrating.But I should note that of course testing is just one of the tools that we are using. All staff working at the border and in our managed isolation and quarantine facilities are using appropriate personal protective equipment using physical distancing and getting regular health checks. Most importantly anyone who was displaying symptoms was being tested. While the routine testing wasn't happening to the extent that we wanted it to some—and many—were still being tested. For example some airport workers were being tested at their local GP but there was no centralised reporting of the number of tests being conducted and that was not good enough. My absolute focus has been on addressing this and the testing has been made mandatory for those working in the front line at our border and our mobile testing sites have been dispatched to gather those swabs.In the last week new systems have been put in place and all tests involving customs officers aviation security staff port and airport workers and anyone working at a managed isolation or quarantine facility such as health staff police defence force and hotel staff are now being coded separately. This allows for a very clear and specific line of reporting so that we know now as of last night in Auckland in managed isolation and quarantine facilities 2806 staff have been swabbed on site with further staff tested at community testing centres and GPs. At least 97 percent of that workforce has been tested.Testing is continuing on site. At other managed isolation and quarantine facilities around the country more than 1599 staff have been tested. Two hundred and forty one customs officers have been tested in the last week out of 277; 308 aviation security workers at Auckland Airport have been tested out of 328 in the last week. As of 6 o'clock last night Auckland Airport had swabbed 2407 of its 4474 workers with a testing team working last night to capture night shift workers. Three thousand four hundred and eighty-five port workers have been tested. At the Port of Auckland more than 5000 staff working from around 800 organisations have accessed the port since 21 July. As at 6 o'clock yesterday 2194 of them had been tested. The dedicated testing team is operating with extended hours to ensure that all workers have access to COVID19 testing including those working on the night shifts and the twilight shifts. Ensuring those workers who are most at risk of coming into contact with the virus are routinely tested must be part of business as usual. Health officials are under no illusions that this is what the Government and the public expect and require. The importance of this work is underlined by today's news of a positive test of a maintenance worker at the Rydges hotel managed isolation facility. This case does not immediately appear to be linked to the current community cluster. Workers at the Rydges facility had been offered testing on 21 and 23 July and again on 10 and 13 August. This case was identified from the 13 August round of routine testing. This case is now under further investigation. We now have 71 cases identified in the community. Sixty-nine of these have so far been definitively linked to the community cluster. To help limit the potential of further spread beyond the cluster for the first time we are moving positive community cases into quarantine. So far 44 cases have been transferred to the Jet Park quarantine facility in Auckland. A further 54 people classed as close contacts have joined them so that households can be kept together. I want to thank those people who have gone into quarantine. They're playing their part to help contain the virus. I also want to acknowledge the effort of our public health units and the National Close Contact Service. So far 1880 close contacts have been identified: 1691 of these have been contacted and they're in self-isolation; 55 contacts have been referred to finding services; and just 134 remain awaiting contact. As of 7 o'clock last night 78.5 percent of close contacts identified between 8 and 14 August have been contacted within two days of being identified. That's just shy now of the 80 percent target but is a real improvement on the performance of our contact tracing services at the height of the outbreak earlier this year. That reflects the good work that's been done to ramp up our contact tracing capability and that work remains ongoing. Of course we can all support the work of our contact tracers by installing and using the NZ COVID Tracer app. Since last Tuesday we've seen a huge increase in the use of the app and it is now being actively used by our contact tracers. With just under 1.5 million registered users it has more than doubled in the last week; 234000 posters have now been printed and are on display; over 7 million posters have been scanned; and more than a million manual entries have been made. To further encourage the use of the app the Government's made it mandatory for all businesses to display QR code posters and that has to happen by tomorrow. Every member of this House knows there is real concern in the community about the re-emergence of COVID-19. Yesterday there were 5149 calls to Healthline compared with 972 on the same day last year. Of those calls 3412 were to the COVID information line. Last week an extra 180 staff were added to handle the increased demand and another 73 staff have been added in the last three days. COVID-19 requires a whole-of-Government and a community-wide response and that's exactly what's happening. We have record levels of testing including mandatory testing for workers at our border for the first time. Our contact tracers are identifying close contacts for isolation and testing. We know how to beat this virus. We are prepared for a second outbreak. We have a plan and we're doing everything right to stamp out COVID-19 once again. Finally I want to reiterate the words of the Director-General of Health: the virus is the problem here; people are the answer.