Editorial: School holidays a much-needed Omicron circuit-breaker

School's out for a winter break, let's hope we get a break from rising cases of illness too. Photo / Getty Images

EDITORIAL

The start of the July school holidays this week offers a welcome potential reset.

A surge in Covid cases has put stress on almost every sector as people have been forced to isolate with household cases in an attempt to slow the spread.

We could see the wave building by Tuesday with 9629 new community cases of Covid-19 - up by more than 3000 from the day before. By Friday, it was holding at 9318 new community cases. The seven-day rolling average of community case numbers was 8313, significantly higher than the same day last week when it was 6422.

This past week also, the Omicron subvariant BA.2.75 was detected in New Zealand for the first time.

Worryingly, BA.2.75 has some characteristics that look like they may enhance its ability to evade immunity, similar to the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants, and there is some early evidence overseas that it may be slightly more transmissible than BA.2.

University of Auckland senior lecturer in computational evolution Dr David Welch said the Government must be considering the possibility of moving the country to the red traffic light setting.

"Our hospitals are already really, really full. Not only because of Covid but also because of other winter illnesses."

The problem facing the Government is cases will inevitably rise over the next few days as there hasn't been any action to stem the spread.

While speculation mounts over moving to the heavy restrictions on movement and gatherings of the red traffic light setting, the Government will be well aware this would have limited success due to a lack of consistent compliance and the likelihood of protests.

Epidemiologist professor Michael Baker is right when he suggests New Zealand has been a slow learner compared with other countries that have been handling their outbreaks well.

Places like Japan and Singapore do have an advantage, being mask-wearing societies that stay home when they are sick but surely the past two years have taught New Zealand that also? Apparently, not.

Inclement weather, rampant inflation, and closure of schools for two weeks may just persuade more of us to hunker down and break the chains of transmission.