New Zealand now has two brand new confirmed cases of Covid-19

There are two new cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand.

The cases are related to the border as a result of recent travel from the United Kingdom, the Ministry of Health confirmed in a statement.

The cases are connected.

• READ MORE: This is everything we know about the two new cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand

It is thought the two new cases were given special exemption to attend a funeral in New Zealand, TVNZ reports.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield will provide further details about the cases at a media stand up at 3pm.

Every traveller who arrives into New Zealand on a flight that departs from another country must go into one of two facilities for an isolation period of 14 days.

If a traveller is symptomatic on arrival, they are placed in a quarantine facility for two weeks. If they are not symptomatic on arrival, they are placed in an approved managed isolation facility for two weeks, according to the ministry's website.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern warned again yesterday that there would be more Covid-19 cases in the future, but hopefully, they would only be at the border.

"I don't want New Zealanders to believe that the battle is over when it is not," she said yesterday.

The two new cases mean the total number of confirmed cases in New Zealand has reached 1156, the combined total of confirmed and probable cases is now 1506.

Yesterday marked 24 days since the last confirmed case and also the end of the Marist College cluster in Auckland which infected 96 people.

The Ministry of Health's elimination day was also yesterday - 28 days with no cases since the last community transmission case came out of isolation.

That case, a Ministry for Primary Industries worker who tested positive during targeting testing at the border, went into isolation on April 30 and came out on May 18.

The number of recovered cases is 1482 and no one in the country is receiving hospital-level care for Covid-19, the ministry said.

A total of 824 tests for the virus were completed on Sunday, taking the total number of completed tests to 311,121.

Only five significant clusters remain open in New Zealand following the closure of the Marist College cluster.

A cluster is only considered closed after there have been no new cases for 28 days from the date of when all cases have completed isolation.

A teacher at the Mt Albert, Auckland, Catholic girls' school was the first person in the cluster to test positive to Covid-19.

All of New Zealand's cases until that point had been linked to overseas travel but the teacher had not been overseas or in contact with anyone who recently returned home.

The five remaining significant clusters are: The Bluff wedding, Matamata's Redoubt Bar, St Margaret's residential aged-care home in Auckland, Rosewood rest home in Christchurch, and Atawhai Assisi Rest Home and Hospital in Matangi.

New data revealed the flu has been reduced to historically low levels in New Zealand, thanks in large to the response to our pandemic response.

The latest ESR data showed that, for the week ending June 5, the rate of consultations for flu-like illness was five per 100,000, compared with a historical rate of 16.5 per 100,000.

While consultation rates soared to more than 25 per 100,000 in March - in line with a surge in patients being checked for Covid-19 - the following month, figures dropped away to just 4.3 per 100,000.

Usually, at this time of year, there'd be about 22 flu-related calls per 100,000 people to Heathline; rates were instead sitting at about 15 per 100,000.

This article was first published NZ Herald on the and is republished here with permission.