New COVID-19 cases

Prime Minister Hu’akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni confirmed this at a press conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ conference room at the St George Building in Nuku’alofa.

“But the good news is there are no cases admitted at any Ministry of Health facility and there have been no serious cases reported.”

The Minister for Health, Dr Saia Piukala confirmed in a statement that there were new cases reported in the last week.

Dr Piukala also confirmed there were 31 new cases at the Hu’atolitoli Prison who are now in managed isolation at the prison.

The number of active cases has dropped sharply and is now 38.

The health authorities say one patient remains in hospital.

The death toll of the pandemic is 648, with most fatalities registered during last year's outbreak with the Delta variant.

Vaccinations have continued and 81 percent of those 12 years and older have had two jabs.

International travel options have been expanded with last week's resumption of flights between Tahiti and New Zealand.

The Micronesian Island nation recorded 65 new Covid-19 cases on Thursday, bringing the total number of positive infections to 181.

The Health Ministry said the new infections were reported on Tarawa, and those infected are in home isolation.

There are now 145 local and 36 imported cases.

Authorities also confirmed that some government officials have tested positive for the virus and are working remotely.

The authorities are advising people to strictly follow the Covid-19 protocols to minimise the risks and spreading the virus in the community.

Contact tracers have so far linked 121 of the new cases to existing outbreaks, but the number of cases who were in the community while infectious is no longer being reported each day.

The new cases resulted from 42,258 test results processed on Sunday, when 29,955 vaccine doses were delivered at state-run sites.

Last week the Victorian government shifted away from trying to reach zero cases of coronavirus in the community, and is instead focusing on keeping case numbers as low as possible while getting people vaccinated.

Mainland China posted 118 new cases for 18 January, up from 109 a day earlier, the national health authority said in a statement.

Of those, 106 were local infections, with 43 reported in Jilin, a new daily record for the northeastern province, and 35 in Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing, the National Health Commission said.

The Chinese capital itself reported one new case, while Heilongjiang in the north reported 27 new infections.

The Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare said all five cases involved passengers on a recent repatriation flight connecting through Auckland in New Zealand.

Sogavare said four of the people who tested positive were local footballers returning from the United Kingdom and the fifth person was a Korean national.

There was no media conference today.

In a statement, the Health Ministry said both of today's new cases had an epidemiological link to an existing case and they were both associated with the bereavement events sub-cluster that was linked to the Mt Roskill Evangelical Fellowship group.

The ministry said one of the new cases is a student at Sunnyvale School in Henderson.

Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield says the 13 new cases are all linked to one Auckland cluster - the four people who were reported as confirmed cases yesterday and the day before.

He says the one new case in managed isolation is a woman in her 30s who arrived from the Philippines.

There are now a total of 36 active cases in New Zealand.

Dr Bloomfield says 17 of these are linked to the new outbreak: "Given that all these cases are linked, we are treating them as a cluster."

"We are reviewing exactly what has happened in these circumstances because they cannot be repeated," Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said.

Yesterday compassionate leave for those in quarantine had been suspended.

In a Facebook message last night, Ardern said that would not change unless testing was "rigorous".

There was an expectation that anyone who came into from overseas was in quarantine for two weeks and would not leave without being tested, she said. "That was where there was a failure in this case."