October 11 2021
Covid-19 restrictions in Auckland won't be relaxed as alert level 3 "as it stands" will stay in place for another week. Waikato and Northland will remain at alert level 3 until 11:59pm on Thursday.
A person who tested positive for Covid 19 in Bay of Plenty has now tested negative - meaning the earlier test was possibly incorrect, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says.
And as Auckland sits on a knife-edge - with one epidemiologist admitting he's "freaking out" over 60 cases announced yesterday - Health Minister Andrew Little says case numbers today are looking better.
Cabinet is today deciding on alert level settings for the country, including whether to shift Auckland to the next alert level step and its neighbouring regions out of level 3. It comes a week after the Government introduced a new step system for levels 3 and 2 for Auckland, with the position reviewed weekly.
But the easing of restrictions looks unlikely in Auckland, and Ardern has indicated Cabinet is now reviewing whether school students can actually return to class next week, after the holidays.
Covid-19 modeller Professor Shaun Hendy said we were not quite at a point where a return to level 4 was required, but we were not far off.
"We should start planning for a circuit-breaker level 4 lockdown in Auckland, if required - we are definitely on a knife edge."
Katikati false alarm
Ardern told TVNZ the person who had been moving house from Auckland to Katikati had now returned a negative Covid test result overnight - as has their family. She said the earlier positive result was either incorrect or was a weak positive or historical case.
Ardern told RNZ the positive test originally returned for the person was "what's called a high CT" result. Retesting because of this has shown a negative result.
Jacinda Ardern said a positive high CT test result may show up for a number of reasons, including the possibility the person may have Covid-19 antibodies from a historic infection.
She said all the person's contacts had also tested negative, and the case was a reminder to everyone to get vaccinated. "The Delta outbreak is not just an issue for Auckland."
Meanwhile, Ardern said a Covid-positive person who travelled to Northland remains unco-operative with authorities about their movements, despite police now being involved. A second woman has been contacted but not located.
Ardern told The AM Show said the two women had used falsified or inaccurate information to get to Northland. She said she had no evidence to believe they were sex workers or that they had travelled there with a Mongrel Mob gang member.
Police were involved because the women were not cooperating.
She said authorities are still taking an "aggressive" approach in the fight against Covid in Auckland.
"We don't have enough resilience from vaccines yet to stop that outbreak from just that individual armour of vaccines."
We still need people getting vaccinated and restrictions, she said.
Put to her that there remains a lot of concern among parents and teachers about children returning to school after the holidays next week, Ardern told TVNZ more would be revealed later this afternoon after Cabinet had met.
She acknowledged the move to open school again was always subject to review.
Talking about alert level 4, she said its success always relied on people's compliance with the rules.
She told The AM Show officials would take vaccination targets into consideration and the number of cases in the outbreak and its ability to manage it before moving easing restrictions.
It would be harder to do so if restrictions were not being followed and there was an increase in cases, she said.
Ardern said while the Government wanted to reach a 90 per cent-plus vaccination target before it lifted restrictions, it didn't mean they couldn't make small moves to ease restrictions, such as allowing retail stores to open before then.
University of Auckland epidemiologist Rod Jackson says there is "no chance" of Auckland loosening restrictions today.
"I'm freaking out in a major way," Jackson said of the possible spread of Covid-19 into Northland.
"I'm freaking out because I think we're going to have major problems there. Auckland we've got to suppress it until we are all vaccinated because we are well and truly in the poo if we don't keep it down and keep it suppressed before we get high vaccination rates."
Cases 'look better' today: Health Minister
Health Minister Andrew Little told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking that he didn't have any new updates on cases but said he expected numbers to "look better" today, including in terms of unlinked cases.
The woman who travelled to Northland with a positive case had been contacted but officials did not know where she was.
As for gang involvement, Little said there was no connection with gangs.
He said Cabinet hadn't made a final decision about alert levels yet.
Little said the Government was aware of businesses struggling and that was the "centrepiece" of its discussion about alert levels. "We look through all that and weigh that up against the health risk."
"We've got to start to reduce those restrictions because it is tough on people but we've also got to look after people's health."
If the Government knew all the cases were linked one day to the next, they wouldn't be concerned, but they were still having unlinked cases in Auckland.
Hospital rates up
The Delta outbreak has seen infected people hospitalised at twice the rate of all the country's previous Covid-19 cases.
It's figures like that, along with the 60 new cases announced on Sunday - including 56 in Auckland - signalling the start of "exponential growth", which experts say make any loosening of restrictions today "not even worth contemplating".
Since the easing of restrictions last week, case numbers have risen steadily by the day, spreading across the border into Northland, Waikato and Bay of Plenty, with hundreds of locations of interest.
The spread is threatening some of the country's most vulnerable communities, which have also been so far poorly served by the vaccination rollout and still have much lower rates.
Before Ardern's announced the BOP case was now negative, Western Bay of Plenty mayor Garry Webber said it was a "bugger" that a person had tested positive for Covid.
It was now about prevention - getting tested and getting vaccinated against the virus, he told TVNZ. "We're going to have to do more than what we thought we were going to do and have to do it quicker."
Webber said they had quite a large elderly community in the area and so moves are now being made to get mobile testing and vaccination services door-to-door. "There's a nervous calm," he said.
Gangs anxious about vaccination
Martin Kaipo, chief executive of Te Hau Āwhiowhio ō Otangarei Trust, said some gang members felt anxious about getting the Covid vaccine because they did not know exactly what was in it and therefore did not trust it entirely.
"All that is causing confusion and it makes it harder for those trying to encourage the benefits of the vaccine.
"We have to go to them and have those conversations around ... the values of family," Kaipo told TVNZ's Breakfast programme.
He said that message needed to get through to gangs - that the reason behind getting vaccinated is for the benefit of their children, their families and their future.
Kaipo acknowledged the work that authorities were doing to get through to gangs and praised the work with gang leaders.
"Not everyone can walk into that environment and have that conversation."
Kaipo also praised those leaders among some gangs who had taken up the call to get vaccinated and were preaching the get vaccinated message within their gang communities.
Not far off return to level 4: modeller
Covid-19 modeller Professor Shaun Hendy said we were not quite at a point where a return to level 4 was required, but we were not far off.
"We should start planning for a circuit-breaker level 4 lockdown in Auckland, if required - we are definitely on a knife edge."
In the latest Delta outbreak, as of figures from last week, about 10 per cent of 1357 cases have needed hospital care - more than twice the rate for the more than 3000 cases recorded previously, mostly of the initial non-Delta variant.
Given this high rate a "circuit-breaker" could be needed if cases surpassed 100 a day, which could occur even in the next week, Hendy said.
Already it appeared contact tracers were struggling to keep up, with the number of unlinked cases continuing to rise - 19 in Sunday's figures and 49 over the past fortnight.
At that point contact tracers could start to be overwhelmed, and daily case numbers double within a week. With about 10 per cent of cases needing hospital care, the medical system could start to be "under threat", Hendy said.
"That 10 per cent, that is higher than we have modelled. We know from Delta overseas it has a higher hospitalisation rate, and we know Māori and Pasifika are at higher risk as well due to being poorly served by the healthcare system, and make up a high proportion of this current cluster."
What gave Hendy hope was seeing the vaccination rates ramp up across the country.
In the current outbreak those fully vaccinated made up just over three per cent of all cases, and just over one per cent of those hospitalised.
Currently about 56 per cent of the population aged 12 and over are fully vaccinated, and 82 per cent had at least one dose.
"It is still possible we can beat this outbreak at current settings, provided people continue to follow the rules and we really get jabs in arms," Hendy said.
Immunologist Dr Dianne Sika-Paotonu said her major concern with the current outbreak was how it continued to travel through some of the most marginalised communities, where vaccination rates were still very low.
Māori vaccination rates remained about a third behind the overall rate, and those for Pasifika about a fifth behind.
This was largely due to the rollout implicitly prioritising European/Other and Asian ethnicity, mainly from the age distribution, despite research showing Māori and Pasifika were much more vulnerable to the virus at lower ages.
Despite huge efforts recently to address these inequities, the gap continued to widen.
"The consequences of any premature restriction changes would be dire for our vulnerable communities," Sika-Paotonu said.
"If we are not careful our health system can easily be overwhelmed."
Today's Cabinet meeting comes after a huge week since the Government announced its change in strategy away from elimination and a new step system for alert levels.
Epidemiologist Dr Michael Baker said the new step system was "very confusing", and dangerously gave an expectation to people in Auckland restrictions would be eased.
"That system should be abandoned - it is not realistic in the short term."
The comments around moving away from elimination also caught many by surprise, and there was little detail about how and why it should occur, Baker said.
Instead, Baker and colleagues have suggested reworking the current alert-level system, and introducing a regional strategy.
This could see Auckland focus on regional suppression, while the rest of the country continued a regional elimination approach, or zero tolerance for cases.
Baker said the daily case direction in recent days showed the "beginning of exponential growth", and most concerningly steady growth in unlinked cases.
What was even more concerning was that case numbers typically reflected what was occurring about a week ago, meaning effects of the restriction changes last week would be felt in the coming days.
"You couldn't even contemplate lightening restrictions with that kind of upward trend.
"I remain very optimistic though that we can come through this in good shape. We just need a clear strategy."
The Prime Minister has also faced criticism for leaving Wellington last week shortly after those announcements, and as the outbreak spread further out of Auckland.
Ardern has spent the past several days touring remote parts of the country to promote vaccination uptake.
National Party leader Judith Collins said it was unacceptable for the Prime Minister nor any senior ministers to be absent from facing questions over the weekend as the outbreak escalated.
"It is easy to stand in front of microphones and cameras when you are being praised and things are going well. It takes a strong leader to front up when things are going wrong and the people of New Zealand have questions."
