COVID-19: Jacinda Ardern defends pace locations of interest are released to public after Wellington Mayor criticism – Newshub

"It's going all over the place," said another. "It obviously sucks but we're in level 4 - I think that's the right thing to do."

Kilbirnie's Asian Food Specialist and Pak'nSave are also on the list, plus Air New Zealand flight NZ443 from Auckland to Wellington on Thursday afternoon.

Delta has got people on edge, but it's not too scary for Mayor Andy Foster, who's holding his breath.

"So far it's not too bad, but obviously time is going to tell," he said.

At least one of the positive cases travelled from Auckland to Wellington in a private car. They stopped four times along the way - in Tokoroa, Waiouru's service station and public toilets, and Bulls.

Contact tracers have their work cut out for them.

"The majority of those contacts are located in the Auckland and Waikato regions, with small proportion in other areas of the rest of North Island and South Island," said Director of Public Health Dr Caroline McElnay.

The Director-General of Health was alerted to the first Wellington cases before 9am on Friday, but there were no locations of interest on the Ministry of Health website until after 6pm that night.

"It's been very frustrating waiting for these additional locations to be made public," says Mayor Foster.

But Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says getting those locations of interest can be "iterative", and says it's a balancing act of putting out information accurately and quickly.

One of the locations is Countdown in Johnsonville, where last night shoppers were told to leave immediately so it could close for a deep clean.

"We were told to drop what we had and start walking out, and yeah, I was in a bit of a shock afterwards," said shopper Daniel Borrie.

Johnsonville's 1841 bar is another location of interest.

"A 400-gram sirloin [steak] and a beer for $25 has proven too much of a lure for some people - here we are," said owner Jono.

Testing sites were busy on Saturday, as people scrambled to get swabbed in the hopes they can wave goodbye to the virus in this region soon.

Queues were under control though as more pop-up testing centres were set up, including at Te Papa, Sky Stadium and in Hataitai.

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COVID-19: Jacinda Ardern defends pace locations of interest are released to public after Wellington Mayor criticism - Newshub