Close contacts of positive COVID-19 cases are being urged by health officials to follow two key rules to help stop the spread of the virus.
Auckland Regional Public Health Service (ARPHS) Director Dr William Rainger said during the daily coronavirus press conference on Thursday it's important these guidelines are followed.
"The first is to get a test. All close contacts need to be tested, even if you don't have symptoms," he said.
"The second thing is if you're a close contact of someone who has tested positive for COVID-19, you need to stay at home in self-isolation for the full 14 days. Your 14 days starts from the day you last had contact with an infected person."
He added that even if someone has a negative test early on, they can still be developing COVID-19 and be infectious - even if they feel well.
"It can take two weeks to show symptoms, so it's very, very important [to] comply with isolation and be tested. This is critical to stopping the spread of the virus to other people if it turns out you do have COVID."
Since August 11, which was when the recent Auckland outbreak cases were confirmed, 3162 close contacts have been identified by the contract tracing team, the Ministry of Health said. Of this, 2984 have been contacted and are self-isolating and the rest are in the process of being contacted.
On Wednesday, laboratories across New Zealand processed 10,521 tests for COVID-19, bringing the total number of tests completed to date to 788,081.
Of that total, Health Minister Chris Hipkins said more than 160,000 have been undertaken since the most recent community outbreak.
In saying that, he said the vast majority of confirmed cases have been identified through contact tracing, not testing. He estimates the number of cases picked up at testing stations over the last week would be "close to zero".
"We're pretty confident we are on top of this," he said on Thursday.
Overall the case numbers on a daily basis are tracking down, which Hipkins described as "encouraging". However he still expects there will be cases for another few weeks.
About 67,000 tests were carried out in the last week - just shy of the Ministry of Health's target of 70,000 - but a high testing rate will remain in place beyond the end of the week blitz.
Hipkins said there's always a drop-off in testing over the weekend, but that's balanced out by rates during the week, which are higher than average.
