There are now 26 cases of COVID-19 in the Southland region – 19 in Invercargill and seven in the Southland district.

Neighbouring Queenstown Lakes district has the highest proportion of the 118 confirmed and probable cases in the Southern District Health Board catchment with 45 confirmed cases. There are currently no cases traced to Gore district, three in Clutha district and nine in the Central Otago district.

There is a total of 797 confirmed and probable cases in New Zealand as at 8am today – 89 of them identified in the previous 24 hours. Thirteen patients are in hospital around the country, two of them in intensive care. All are said to be “stable”.

While there can be a lag between confirmation of cases and public notification of those cases, this lag does not create any public health risk. Anyone who is tested for COVID-19 goes into immediate self-isolation. Contact tracing starts as soon as test results are received, and close contacts are informed and isolated immediately.

Ninety-two people in New Zealand are now considered to have recovered from COVID-19 – 10 more than yesterday.

Two significant clusters continue to contribute to the southern figures – an Invercargill wedding (now referred to as a “Southland event” in official releases) from which 34 infections have been traced, 12 of them in the previous 24 hours; and the World Hereford Conference in Queenstown (now referred to as a “Queenstown event”), which links 27 cases, none new in the previous 24 hours.

The World Health Organisation reported overnight an additional 72,736 cases in the previous 24 hours, bringing the world total to 823,626 confirmed. There have been 40,598 deaths worlwide, 4193 of them in the previous 24 hours. Three new countries – Botswana, Burundi, and Sierra Leone – reported cases of COVID-19 in the previous 24 hours.