Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield says the Ministry of Health is still awaiting the results of genomic sequencing to clarify the Covid-19 variant a person from Sydney, who visited Wellington at the weekend, is infected with.

However, there are still no new positive cases of Covid-19 in the community amid a surge in testing.

Bloomfield confirms the wait for results from Australia regarding the variant of Covid-19 have been delayed by staff sickness in the lab which processes the results.

However, he says there remains a strong epidemiological link to the current Sydney cluster, which is the Delta variant.

A result on the genomic sequencing is expected later today.

Regarding close contacts, 1752 people have now been identified with 550 required to isolate for 14 days.

So far, 532 have returned negative results, eight have returned overseas, 1212 are awaiting test results.

Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins confirms that wastewater testing in the Wellington region also failed to identify Covid-19.

Hipkins also reminds those who were in Wellington over the weekend, but are now elsewhere in New Zealand, to check the locations of interest for the capital over the weekend to see if they are impacted.

'If you are, please regard yourself as living at alert level 2 even though you are not currently in the Wellington region.”

Over 10,000 tests were carried out across New Zealand yesterday, 3713 of which were in the Wellington region and at least 4500 further tests are expected today.

Two Tauranga-based close contacts of the Sydney case are currently isolating and tested negative on Wednesday.

At 6pm Wednesday, Wellington went to alert level 2 after a traveller from Australia with Covid-19 visited numerous locations around the city over the weekend. The rest of New Zealand remains at level 1.

Around 7000 tests were processed yesterday with over 2100 of those in Wellington.