Police Association president Chris Cahill on the threat of Covid for Wellington police officers, what should have been done differently Wednesday night when cars re-entered the site, and how staff are holding up after 17 days of protest. Video / NZ Herald
Papakura Marae Health Clinic GP Dr Matire Harwood is seeing a rapid rise in Omicron case numbers and most of them are children.
"Most of them have been kids who have been at school. The numbers are just going up and up and up. And if they aren't a positive case, they are a close contact," Harwood said.
She said she expects the clinic to be dealing with 90 positive Covid-19 cases a day by the end of the week.
"We're swabbing about 300 people a day and they are close contacts with symptoms."
Her thoughts are echoed by Manukau GP Dr Api Talemaitoga, who said most of the cases he is seeing are children and young people.
"It's definitely a different demographic to Delta," he said.
Talemaitoga said on Wednesday that 20 of the practice's patients had returned positive tests in the previous 24 hours.
He said he thinks the reason more children are testing positive is that the vaccine rollout for 5- to 11-year-olds only started last month, coupled with the fact children are now back at school, which is adding to the rate of transmission.
Manukau GP Dr Api Talemaitoga says most Omicron cases he is seeing are children and young people - a different demographic to the Delta outbreak. Photo / Ryan Anderson
Counties Manukau DHB (Middlemore) director of population health Dr Gary Jackson said figures show 19.4 per cent of current Covid cases in the area are aged 0 to 14.
"Within this younger demographic, infections are often asymptomatic which unfortunately does accentuate the spread of Covid, as asymptomatic people can be infectious and still shed virus, but will be largely unaware that they are doing so," he said.
"In terms of any increases over time, the largest number of cases are in the 15-19 (12 per cent), 20-24 (13 per cent) and 20-29 (12 per cent) age groups, and this has been very steady over the past few weeks."
That equates to 0- to 29-year-olds accounting for 56.4 per cent of all current cases in Counties Manukau.
"They are the people transmitting it," Jackson said.
But Jackson said while there is no vaccination available for the under 5s, and most 5- to 11-year-olds have only had one dose of the vaccine so far, it doesn't appear to be placing them at any greater risk during the Omicron outbreak.
Ministry of Health data released to Stuff earlier this month showed children, teenagers and young adults accounted for most of the country's community Omicron Covid-19 cases early in the outbreak.
South Auckland GPs are reporting more children and young people testing positive for Omicron. Photo / Braden Fastier
The figures showed, from January 23 to February 5, there were 1579 community cases of Covid-19. In that time, the highest number of cases (325) was recorded among the 10 to 19-year-old age group.
University of Auckland epidemiologist Rod Jackson said a high incidence of cases among children in south Auckland was not surprising, as the area has both a younger population and more people living in overcrowded conditions.
But Jackson said the data would be the "tip of the iceberg" and the real number of cases would be much higher.
