Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield has announced 63 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, of which 62 are in the community and one in managed isolation facilities.

There are now 210 total cases in the outbreak. 12 of these are in Wellington, all the rest are in Auckland.

There are no confirmed cases on the South Island, although there are currently over 100 close contacts to the outbreak residing on the South island.

He says while these are growing numbers, it is not exponential and that is an encouraging sign.

“The most important thing to control it (the virus outbreak) is to follow Alert Level restrictions,” Dr Ashley says.

An additional 380 contract tracers have been employed over the last week, with the total number now above 1200.

Dr Ashley took the chance to address any racist comments on social media aimed at the members of the Samoan community, which has been part of the current outbreak.

He called the commentators “gutless” for their attacks on people online.

“People are part of the solution, not the problem. The virus is the problem.”

There were a further 14,967 close contacts - 56 per cent had returned test results, and 0.2 per cent were positive.

Of about 405 casual plus contacts, half had been tested with no positive results so far.

As of yesterday there were 148 cases – most were in Auckland but there were 11 in Wellington.

On education in lockdown, Education Minister Chris Hipkins says learning from home was hard for parents, students and teachers. Extra support was being put in for teachers.

Further funding had been given to the Ministry of Education to ensure schools could support learning from home, including learning packs and about 7000 devices which would go out in the next few weeks.

The television channels for education had also started again today.

Chris Hipkins says 80,000 people got a vaccine yesterday - the biggest day yet. There were also record numbers of tests.

He reminded people that over-30s could now book vaccines from today.

"Nobody wants to be in lockdown and the best way to return to enjoying the freedoms we have had is very high vaccinations."

Chris Hipkins says more than 6500 essential workers such as supermarket workers had been vaccinated over the last week.

The deadline for all border workers to get vaccinated was tomorrow and that would be checked.

The wider border workers - including ports - have a further month.

More than 1 million doses had been given out in Auckland generally - a third of all doses.

Chris Hipkins disputed suggestions that Pacific health providers had not been going into churches to vaccinate people, saying he had been told they had been doing that.

He said once gatherings were able to begin again, after lockdowns, that would escalate.