New Zealand recorded 13 new cases of COVID in Auckland, all of which would go into quarantine.
Both new cases are related to the initial four confirmed cases arising from the latest outbreak in the south of the city, first recorded on Tuesday night.
An additional person is in controlled isolation – a woman who came from the Philippines in her 30s.
Health chief Dr Ashley Bloomfield of New Zealand said the total number of suspected cases now is 36.
Two of the latest cases are children less than nine years old.
It comes after three more team members at Auckland’s Americold distribution centre tested positive for COVID-19.
The three staffers served with a guy who had already checked positively.
“It‘s not good. There’s a lot of people awaiting test results, they’ve got families. There’s a lot of anxiety and concern,”Americold managing director Richard Winnall told The New Zealand Herald.
The highest health authority in New Zealand has struck back on suggestions that the country is being too soft on people with COVID-19 infections.
Ashley Bloomfield, Health Director-General, rejected the idea that the government was not working far enough to quarantine people who may have come into contact with the virus.
“I don’t think we have been soft on this at all. We don’t round up people in New Zealand,” he told Newstalk ZB. “We round up sheep; we don’t round up people.”