COVID-19

Secretary of Health, Bob Williams is extremely grateful for the way the community reacted yesterday to the various requests that were asked of them.

As you have probably heard Auckland has moved to Alert Level 3 (lockdown) and the rest of New Zealand to Alert Level 2 as of 6am today, for a period of seven days. NZ needed to do this to get on top of the cases they have and break the chain of transmission.

Earlier this morning Auckland shifted to alert level 3 lockdown for seven days. The rest of New Zealand went into level 2 at the same time and for the same duration. These moves come after the NZ Ministry of Health announcement yesterday afternoon that a new COVID-19 case was detected in the community.

Secretary of Health Bob Williams has this afternoon provided an update with respect to the evolving situation around COVID-19 community cases in Auckland and any impact on the Cook Islands

Passengers who arrived on Friday 29 January entered Supervised Quarantine and were tested for COVID-19 on arrival. All 54 test results came back negative. With no new community cases confirmed in the NZ COVID update this afternoon, passengers currently in Supervised Quarantine will be released from the facility at 6pm today.

Acting Secretary of Health Bob Williams with the support of Cabinet has confirmed that those passengers departing Auckland tomorrow morning will be entering Supervised Quarantine on arrival in Rarotonga.

It has been almost a year since the relocation of Rarotonga Hospital’s Out-Patients and Emergency Department (OPED) services moved to the Tupapa Community Clinic in March 2020.
Since that time, upgrades to the country’s critical health infrastructure have continued at pace, both on Rarotonga and the Pa Enua.

Although Te Marae Ora has had the ability to test for COVID-19 in-country since May 2020, the ministry has been working towards setting up a PCR lab for several months now.