Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her team of Cabinet ministers will today reveal to New Zealand if the country is ready to move into Alert Level 2.
- Small-cafe owners say rules not consistent
- Parts of Scot Tech set to shut down
- 'About trying to plan so we don't go under
- SDHB simulation reveals problems
Ministers meet at 10.30am for an extended Cabinet meeting to discuss the move and Ms Ardern is expected to announce the decision at 4pm. If Cabinet decides the country is ready to come out of Level 3, New Zealand could be moving to Alert Level 2 as early as Wednesday.
New Zealand recorded four new cases of Covid-19 on Saturday and Sunday, all in Auckland.
The cause of all four cases was known, although surveillance testing is likely to continue this week, as health officials will want to quickly act on any cases in the community, particularly if the Government opts to lower the alert level this week.
If any such cases did emerge, Health Minister David Clark said he was confident upgrades in the contact tracing system meant health authorities would be able to manage that workload.
Dr Clark said on Saturday that the Government was working through all the recommendations in Otago academic Ayesha Verrall’ s report on contact tracing, and that it intended to eventually follow all of them.
Dr Verrall’s report, released a fortnight ago, said increases in contact tracing had been too slow and more resources were needed so as to track down anyone who had been in contact with Covid-19 patients.
Those included expanding public health units, development of an outbreak preparedness plan and tighter quarantine monitoring.
"Public health units have more than tripled their capacity and can now deal with up to 185 cases a day, up from about 50 cases a day seven weeks ago," Dr Clark said.
"On top of that, the NCCS (National Close Contact Service), which didn’t even exist eight weeks ago, has more than 200 staff who can make up to 10,000 close contact calls a day."
Work on the other recommendations was ongoing and being monitored by a new committee announced last week, Dr Clark said.
Meanwhile, Dr Clark yesterday announced a further $160 million would be put into the combined pharmaceuticals budget over the next four years.
Only $10 million of that funding will be for this financial year, and the remainder spread over the following three years.
However, Pharmac would be funded to purchase a Covid-19 vaccine, should one be developed, Dr Clark said.
The funding announcement was greeted with scorn by National health spokesman Michael Woodhouse, who called it "insulting and misleading".
"The Health Minister admits the increase isn’t a ramp-up.
"I would go further and say that it is a significant ramp-down in real funding."
