By RNZ.co.nz and is republished with permission.

There have been 29 new community cases of Covid-19 reported in New Zealand today and 25 new cases in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities.

In a statement, the Ministry of Health said there were 11 new cases in Auckland, two in Northland, one in Western Bay of Plenty, 14 in Rotorua and one in Wellington.

There are 29 people in hospital with Covid-19 and two are in ICU or HDU.

An Auckland MIQ worker returned a positive result for Covid-19 late yesterday afternoon and is in isolation, the ministry said.

The test was taken as part of routine border worker surveillance testing.

Genome sequencing is being carried out to determine what variant the infection is and the results will be reported in tomorrow’s 1pm Covid-19 update.

Investigations are underway to determine if the infection originated from the community or the facility.

The ministry said the worker is fully vaccinated and up-to-date with regular testing.

Household contacts of the MIQ worker all returned negative tests last night.

The 25 cases at the border came from Australia, India, Brazil, Nepal, Fiji, France, Singapore, United Kingdom, United States and Canada.

The ministry said New Zealand continues to see many border cases arriving from overseas, reflecting the growing number of Omicron cases globally.

Yesterday there were 18 new community cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand and 43 reported in MIQ.

Yesterday the ministry said there had been 266 Omicron cases detected at the border since the start of December, with more than 18,000 people being processed through managed isolation and quarantine facilities in that time.