The number of COVID-19 cases in Southland has now jumped to 24 – 14 of those in Invercargill, the remainder in the Southland district.

There are no cases attributed to Gore, neighbouring Clutha district has three, the Queenstown Lakes district now has 38, while the Central Otago district has eight.

A total of 108 COVID-19 cases have now been reported in the Southern District Health Board region – 107 confirmed and one probable. This is the highest number of any DHB in the country.

Two clusters have been identified in the south. Twenty-two cases have been linked to a wedding at Bluff – 14 of those in the past 24 hours – while the number of transmissions linked to the World Hereford Conference in Queenstown is now at 27 – of which were confirmed in the past 24 hours. A cluster is defined as a group of 10 or more cases traced to a single event.

Globally, the World Health Organisation reported overnight a total of 750,890 confirmed cases, and 36,405 deaths – 3301 of those in the previous 24 hours.)