As of yesterday, close Covid-19 contacts are no longer required to spend seven days in self-quarantine.

Prime Minister Mark Brown made the announcement in yesterday’s Covid-19 update where he confirmed 13 more positive cases. The total number of Covid-19 is now 84, of which 77 remain active (as of 12 noon yesterday).

Household contacts – people sharing accommodation with a positive case – are still required to quarantine for 10 days.

Brown apologised to people who had already started their quarantine process and said they still needed to complete the seven-day quarantine period.

There are 160 close and household contacts currently in quarantine.

PM Brown said the number of people who were tested is still being confirmed.

“At least several hundred more were also tested across our various government departments and in some of our larger private sector organisations yesterday as well,” he said.

Brown said the early results was “very encouraging news”.

“At the moment this result would appear to indicate that the virus is not yet spreading as fast as we thought it might be.

“While it is important to note that we cannot always accurately predict how this virus will behave, if the spread really is more limited than we thought it would be at this stage, then this is likely due to both our very high vaccination rate and our continued observance of the national Covid-19 health and safety guidelines.”

Secretary of Health, Bob Williams said there were still more people to be tested.

“While we are happy with the outcome, I think that today and tomorrow will give us a better picture,” Williams said yesterday.

Despite cases continuing to climb each day, the latest location of interest was On The Rocks Nightclub on February 25, which was posted on Sunday. 

Williams said no more locations of interest had been added because most of the cases have been linked to cluster one, which was related to a family gathering.

He said a case investigation was underway for the other positive cases.