Four cases of COVID-19 have been found in the Upper Hauraki community, acquired directly from a case who had travelled from Auckland. This was an example of undetected transmission in a geographically isolated group. No additional cases have been detected so far. To recognise such outbreaks early, we need to achieve a high rate of testing Waikato adults and children with acute respiratory tract illness.
We are unable to return rapid COVID test results for all patients in an ideal time frame but testing with a 90 min turnaround time can be arranged for selected cases by phoning the microbiology laboratory or clinical microbiologist.
Waikato Respiratory Virus Report 2021 09 21
