"The rolling average is going down consistently, what we would expect to see is it move down to a new plateau and that it will hopefully stay for a period, but we can't expect this disease to completely disappear".
Baker said he hoped that one day the disease would see stable lower rates, but that milestone was still a dream for Covid, which has proved time again just how unpredictable it is.
"What happens next is really hard to know. We could see if numbers continue to go down to these low levels, that this becomes endemic, however, we can only give it that name when it becomes predictable, which Covid is far from as it continues to develop variants and sub-variants".
He maintained that although these numbers are promising, it is far from the time we can get complacent due to the strain that still exists on the New Zealand health system.
"We are definitely not out of the woods at all with this virus because it is still having a major health impact on New Zealand"
"We have approximately 180 imported cases every day, we should expect to see more subvariants that escape the immunity that we have now created."
Today, there were 557 people in hospital with the virus, including 15 in intensive care. The Ministry of Health reported 11 virus-related deaths.
"We know that a large number of infections are being under-reported and that one in 1000 people who get it die from it, it is still going to cause a lot of death," Baker said.
Baker said it may be weeks before we see the number of deaths go down to lower levels.
