There are 53 new community cases of Covid-19 today, all in Auckland.

This brings the total number of active cases in the outbreak to 562, with 547 in Auckland and 15 in Wellington. 

Yesterday, 16,370 tests were processed across New Zealand.

More than 34,120 individual contacts of the cases have been identified and around 87% have had a test. There are 444 locations of interest.

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Cabinet is meeting today to discuss the Auckland and Northland Alert Level, with an announcement expected around 4pm.

While there has been a drop today in the daily number of cases for the first time since the start of the Delta outbreak on August 17, the rate of testing often drops over the weekend.

Yesterday, there were 83 new community cases announced, from more than 23,000 processed tests.

The rest of the country is scheduled to drop down to Alert Level 3 at 11.59pm tomorrow, Tuesday. That will be reviewed by Cabinet next Monday.

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It was revealed today a woman in New Zealand has died from a rare side-effect of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccination.

The woman's death was due to myocarditis, inflammation of the heart muscle wall. It weakens the heart, leading to heart failure.

It is the first case in this country where a death in the days following vaccination has been linked to the vaccine. Few other details are available, while the Coroner investigates.

While there are other reports of deaths in someone recently vaccinated, they have not been considered to be related to vaccination. There have been 32 non-fatal post-vaccine cases of myocarditis and pericarditis in NZ.

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New Zealand's COVID-19 Vaccine Independent Safety Monitoring Board (CV-ISMB) has advised the Ministry of Health to ensure clinicians remain vigilant and are aware of the signs of myocarditis and pericarditis.

They can include new onset chest pain, shortness of breath and an abnormal heartbeat. It’s important that anyone who experiences these symptoms in the first few days after vaccination seeks medical attention promptly.

"The Pfizer vaccine is highly effective in protecting against serious illness and death from COVID-19, and we remain confident about using it in New Zealand," says CV-ISMB Chair Dr John Tait. 

Yesterday 47,897 vaccines were administered. Of these 36,476 were first doses and 11,421 were second doses. This is a record for a Sunday.

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 More than 3.33 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered to date (to 11.59pm on 29 August).

Of these, 2.17 million are first doses and more than 1.16 million are second doses.