270 new cases in South, two deaths
With 4489 new community cases of Covid-19 and 496 hospitalisations, the Ministry of Health's Deputy director-general hopes the nation has turned a corner.
The Ministry of Health said in a statement today there were 270 new community cases in the Southern DHB area and two deaths to report.
Dr Andrew Old told reporters this afternoon that, broadly, community case numbers are trending downwards.
"Pleasingly the case numbers in over 65s ... has also dropped for the fourth week running. We are continuing to track at the lower of what modelling suggested this winter."
Dr Old said it seemed New Zealand had passed the peak of the latest outbreak and approaching the next plateau. The next question was "how low will we go" in terms of daily cases.
Covid case numbers in health workers had also declined for the fifth week running, while wastewater detections had also dropped.
Community cases
Hospitalisations
Hospitalisation numbers had also dropped in the past week, after weeks of hospital numbers remaining stubbornly high, Old said. The numbers tended to lag behind case numbers and so a reduction in hospitalisations indicated that the transmission of Covid was falling.
There are 496 people in hospital throughout the country today, including 13 in intensive care or a high-dependency unit.
Northland: 23; Waitematā: 60; Counties Manukau: 56; Auckland: 60; Waikato: 73; Bay of Plenty: 14; Lakes: 12; Hawke’s Bay: 36; MidCentral: 19; Whanganui: 5; Taranaki: 9; Tairawhiti: 1; Wairarapa: 9; Capital & Coast: 11; Hutt Valley: 8; Nelson Marlborough: 9; Canterbury: 59; West Coast: 4; South Canterbury: 9; Southern: 19.
Death rate 'remains low'
The Ministry of Health said there are a total of 1794 deaths confirmed at attributable to Covid and there were 16 new deaths to report today.
Four people were from Auckland region, three from Waikato, two each from Canterbury and Southern, and one each from Northland, Bay of Plenty, MidCentral, Nelson Marlborough and South Canterbury.
Two people were in their 60s, one was in their 70s, five were in their 80s and eight were aged over 90. Seven were women and nine were men.
Old said because New Zealand had a low number of cases at the beginning of the outbreak, deaths in this country remained low compared to those elsewhere.
As an example, if New Zealand had suffered a death per million rate similar to the United Kingdom, it would have equated to 13,000 deaths here.
If New Zealand had the same rate of death as the United States it would have led to 15,000 deaths here, Old said.
Old said it was still too early, however, to say that New Zealand was past the peak of deaths from Covid.
New Zealand was still seeing daily deaths and the pandemic still has some way to run.
"It's not going to behave as a seasonal disease," Old said.
New variants were always of concern, however it was expected New Zealand would see continued waves of Covid-19 for some time to come.
Winter challenge
Dr Pete Watson, interim national medical director at Te Whatu Ora - Health New Zealand said the nation's health system still faced a major challenge this winter despite the falling Covid numbers.
"The recent drop in Covid cases is an encouraging trend."
With cases of Covid, influenza and other winter illnesses signalling an encouraging decline, Watson hoped some of the pressure would ease on hospitals across the country.
The recent decline in Covid cases was flowing through into a decline in the number of older Kiwis requiring hospitalisation, he said.
Watson said cases of RSV were also well down this year compared to last year.
While the northern health region was experiencing about 600 RSV daily cases at the peak of the outbreak, this year numbers were closer 100.
To help tackle the winter illnesses, the Government had made flu vaccinations free for all, and made the fourth Covid booster jab and measles jabs available.
He said the basic health measures of getting vaccinated, wearing masks, testing for Covid and isolating when necessary remained the key to helping reduce pressure on the health system through the winter.
Watson said that in most health districts across the country, hospitals were now acting to move on less urgent surgeries and care.
In areas like the northern region, however, health teams remained focused on providing more urgent forms of care, such as for the treatment of cancer and delivering newborn babies.
Vaccination efforts for Maori remained ongoing meanwhile, with mobile campervans being purchased to travel out to rural communities to deliver vaccinations.
Other urban vaccination efforts were focusing on providing all round care, such as offering wider medical check ups and also vaccinations for children.
Watson said the health system continues to be under pressure. While Covid cases were decreasing, there was a big surge in influenza, however we were over that as well, he believed.
On the pressure on the workforce, Covid had caused high levels of sickness.
Māori Health Authority interim chief executive Riana Manuel said it has been an incredible year where the country and people collaborated.
Dr Old said over the past year there has been an "incredible effort" put in by health workers. Between August 17, 2021 and August 15, 2022, nine million Covid vaccinations have been administered to New Zealanders, a statistic that "floored" him.
Health authorities were watching the development of new Covid vaccines closely, he said. They were in the middle of reviewing the advice for protective measures in place for the public which would be provided to the Government shortly.
One year on from Delta
Today's conference is part of a regular update given by the Ministry of Health, but it also marks one year after a Delta community case was discovered on August 17.
A 58-year-old tradie - who had travelled from his North Shore home to the Coromandel Peninsula while infected - was identified as the first case. But five more cases were confirmed by the next morning.
New Zealand had at the time been intent on eliminating new outbreaks of Covid to prevent widespread community transmission.
That meant Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her team immediately announced a snap lockdown on the same evening as the first case was reported.
That Alert Level 4 lockdown shut all non-essential businesses from midnight that night. The next morning, swarms of anxious people flooded testing sites, as the locations of interest accumulated rapidly. Supermarkets, nightclubs, bakeries and petrol stations were just some of the many locations.
Ultimately, the lockdown would not be enough to suppress the outbreak and weeks later much of the country would be released into a less strict lockdown, while Auckland was kept remained under tight restrictions.
The country's focus had by then turned to vaccinating as many citizens as possible to eventually remove lockdown restrictions.
The next day Ardern and the former director-general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield held a media briefing and shared what they knew and predicted with the country.
Officials said they expected to see "120 cases" of the Delta strain in New Zealand, a number that now pales in comparison to the daily figures that saw new infections soar past 20,000 after the Omicron outbreak this year.
- NZ Herald and ODT Online
