There are no new community cases of Covid-19, a day after Auckland rejoined the country at alert level 1.

There are three new caes in managed isolation, the Ministry of Health said it its daily 1pm update.

All 15 cases associated with the Valentie’s Day cluster had now recovered.

“As all New Zealand enjoys being back in alert level 1, a reminder to remain vigilant and stick to the basics: staying home if unwell and getting advice about having a test, washing hands, coughing and sneezing into the elbow, and wearing masks or face coverings on all public transport and keeping track of where you’ve been – scan QR codes wherever you go and turn on Bluetooth tracing in the app dashboard.” the ministry said.

Two of the new cases in MIQ came from India and one from Brazil.

It comes after figures this morning showed a total of 12,709 of the 15,200-strong workforce in MIQ facilities and at the border had so far received the Covid-19 Pfizer vaccines, three weeks into the vaccine rollout programme.

Twenty-one frontline workers have refused the Covid-19 jab.

The head of Managed Isolation and Quarantine (MIQ), Brigadier Jim Bliss, confirmed the figures after anecdotal reports more than a week ago of staff refusing the jab.

Brigadier Bliss told RNZ staff have a right to refuse the vaccine, but there are ramifications. “We go through an education process and we also have a discussion with their employer about the next steps for them and that’s a further conversation with the worker,” he said.

Bliss said all staff get educated about the vaccine but those who decline get extra information.

“We’re strongly encouraging all of our workforce in MIQ and the border to be vaccinated and if not, there has to be a conversation about whether that worker is redeployed in the organisation, or what the next steps are. Hopefully we’ll get them on-side and vaccinated as part of the workforce.”

The Ministry of Health said today the total number of active cases in New Zealand is 88. The total number of confirmed cases is 2066.

Since January 1, there have been 39 historical cases, out of a total of 255 cases.

Meanwhile, the Covid tracer app now has 2,749,249 registered users.

Poster scans have reached 218,659,028 and users have created 8,448,230 manual diary entries. There have been 1,463,619 scans in the last 24 hours.

“It’s critical to keep track of where you’ve been and the COVID Tracer app is an easy way to do this,” said the ministry. “Please continue to scan QR codes wherever you go and turn on Bluetooth tracing in the app dashboard if you haven’t already done so.”

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