Otago and Southland could have as many as 1200 Covid-19 cases, and many more to come, health authorities warned yesterday.
Although officially the Southern District Health Board reported 206 cases yesterday, the board warned that because cases were recorded centrally by where their registered GP was based, people who were actually sick in the South were being recorded as being ill in other regions.
A similar issue last year had affected correct recording of southern vaccination rates.
Escalating case numbers in the past two days, particularly in the student quarter, meant the total of 690 active cases in the South was probably closer to double that, a board spokeswoman said.
"The Southern district, particularly Dunedin, has a large population that is registered with a general practitioner in another area of New Zealand ... It is estimated that total case numbers in the Southern district is closer to 1200."
Dunedin, with 349 active cases, overtook Queenstown (270 active cases) yesterday as the South’s largest Covid hot-spot.
Both centres were considered to have widespread community infections of Covid-19, and people needed to be extra-vigilant of personal hygiene, the spokeswoman said.
The rapid surge in cases has placed local Covid-19 testing under severe pressure and the SDHB and WellSouth put out an urgent plea early yesterday for people to only get a Covid-19 test if they had symptoms or had been asked to by a clinician or public health official.
Despite the request, lengthy queues formed outside the two main testing centres in Dunedin, the demand at the WellSouth testing centre in Malcolm St causing traffic jams on State Highway1.
By the end of the day that clinic had abandoned swabbing tests for everyone and was handing rapid antigen tests (Rats) to people and asking them to come back for a follow-up test if the Rats returned a positive result.
Laboratories processing the tests were also at capacity.
Both Otago Polytechnic and the University of Otago have reported multiple cases among students, and figures released by the Ministry of Health yesterday showed people aged between 10 and 29 made up 505 of Otago and Southland’s 658 cases.
Several student parties have been noted as close contact locations of interest by the ministry.
Dunedin police said patrols in North Dunedin continued to find groups of students trying to find Orientation week parties, and on Monday night had moved on a group of about 400 people from the northern cemetery.
The region’s high case numbers were a sign of things to come, University of Otago epidemiologist Prof Michael Baker warned.
"The direction of travel right now is straight up, and the virus has a doubling time of three to four days at the moment.
"It’s quite shocking, because that means that the rate of incidence will increase 10-fold in two weeks ... from 200, in 12 days that’s 800 and in 16 days it’s 1600."
Although a likely large undercounting, the Southern DHB region’s official case numbers as of yesterday ranked it near the top of New Zealand’s 20 DHBs in terms of raw numbers, headed only by the Auckland DHBs and Waikato.
Prof Baker said on a per capita basis, Southern also had a high ranking, which might reflect it being a tourism destination or which could be due to the large student population.
That, too, could explain the high number of 10 to 29-year-olds in the southern case numbers as those age cohorts made up 75% of all cases.
Test numbers
Total swabs in southern yesterday.—
Southern 2776
Dunedin 1813
Invercargill 209
Queenstown 654
Source: WellSouth, 7pm yesterday.
