New Zealand's Director General of Health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, said Pasifika peoples account for more than half of the current community cases in NZ's delta outbreak.
Photo: Pool / NZME
The outbreak grew to 107 cases today, with 33 community cases reported in Auckland and two in Wellington.
Dr Ashley Bloomfield said a further breakdown of postive Covid-19 cases by ethnicity is being prepared.
"We have got some information on ethnicity and I just made a note that we'll start to publish the ethnicity and age break down. What I can say is over 50% of the cases are of Pacific ethnicity and of the last report I saw, none of the cases were Maori," Dr Bloomfield said.
The number of contacts has also ballooned with more than 13-thousand now identified - that number is expected to climb futher throughout the day.
As a result Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said New Zealand will remain in lockdown for a further four days until 11.59pm this Friday 27 August, and Auckland will continue with Alert Level 4 until next Tuesday 31 August.
Health officials have processed more than 154,000 Covid-19 tests which is a record number for any six day period.
Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
A 'heat map' of known locations of interest shows close contacts are in both North and South Islands
Meanwhile, New Zealand's Government has suspended the sitting of Parliament for one week while Select Committees are to continue virtually.