As New Zealanders await today’s cabinet decision about whether to step down from the restrictions of Covid-19 Alert Level 4, the head of the Southern District Health Board will be among those taking a wait-and-see approach.
Despite the South still accounting for more Covid-19 cases (216) than any other health region in New Zealand, Southern District Health Board chairman Dave Cull yesterday said the region had fared well in some key areas.
The result of the Queenstown pop-up surveillance testing — where 343 people tested in a seven-hour period returned 100% negative results — showed "the comprehensive contact tracing" done here, especially since the identification of the World Hereford Conference cluster, had been successful.
"I think the variable that we’ve done pretty well with in the South has been testing — because we haven’t just tested contacts. We’ve tested, and as the criteria for testing has been broadened, I think we’ve probably per capita done as much testing in the South as anywhere."
Over the weekend there were two new Covid-19 cases identified in the South; there were two new cases on Saturday and none yesterday.
And while the South had 216 cases, 71% (154 cases) had recovered, including two new recovered cases yesterday.
Neither Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern nor Director-general of health Ashley Bloomfield would be drawn on "hypotheticals" about today’s decision during yesterday’s media update, but Dr Bloomfield said he needed to be assured of "both our capacity and the timeliness" of contact tracing.
"I am of the view that we are definitely on a pathway to having what I want — no less than a ‘gold standard’ contact tracing, end-to-end process, because that will be essential for us to be safely within a Level 3 and lower alert level.
"The standard we are looking for is to be able to trace 80% of people within three days. Because all of the current information and mechanism is held locally at district health boards, we’ve had to collate that and do a sweep across them to get that information.
"And that information has been analysed this weekend and will help inform the decision by Cabinet [today]," Dr Bloomfield said.
Yesterday’s new cases are made up of four confirmed cases and five probable cases, and were recorded in Waitemata (5), Canterbury (3) and Waikato (1). All were linked to confirmed cases.
There were 18 people in hospital, including three in ICU and two in a critical condition, one of whom was in Dunedin Hospital.
The total of confirmed and probable cases in New Zealand yesterday was 1431.
