Region risks ‘false sense of security’

Central Otago continues to be caught in a Covid-19 wave, keeping pandemic statistics in the South high.

The region recorded 83 new cases of Covid-19 yesterday adding to the tally of 567 active cases across the district — one person was in Dunstan Hospital.

While the case numbers represent a fall from earlier in the week, Central Otago is yet to see numbers fall consistently as they have across the South — leading to questions as to why.

Geographic spread may be a factor but not the full picture of the transmission and behaviour of the virus in the district.

Covid-19 only recently arrived in Ranfurly with pupils from boarding schools and university students bringing the first cases in the Maniototo home with them, long-serving GP Dr Verne Smith of Ranfurly Medical Centre, said.

"We’ve had no Covid for two years and in the past month to six weeks we’ve just had a bit of a storm ... "

From boarding school pupils and university students Covid-19 had quickly spread.

"Before you knew, it was in the shearing gangs and going through all the schools and it’s just gone from there."

He believed Maniototo people’s vigilance had helped stave off the pandemic, possibly coupled with the area’s relative "I think definitely the Maniototo has always been a bit insular."

That meant the arrival of this pandemic in the Maniototo was not dissimilar in pattern to a century ago — the 1918 influenza pandemic, or "Spanish Flu".

While case numbers were not recorded, deaths were, and Maniototo County as it was then, was one of few populated areas nationwide to escape with no deaths attributed to the February 1918 to April 1920 pandemic.

Others included Fiord County (Te Anau area) and Stewart Island County.

Maniototo’s fortunes during that pandemic did not surprise Dr Smith and he cited the sealing of the road from Middlemarch to Kyeburn (State Highway 87), which he believed took place as late as 1989, as an example of the area’s comparative remoteness.

Central Otago Mayor Tim Cadogan said the district’s geographic spread helped slow the spread of Covid-19 but that was only part of it.

"My best guess ... is that it is a combination of things," he said.

"We have one of the oldest populations in the area [the South] and I suspect, once Omicron was in the community, a lot of older people may have hunkered down at home or greatly reduced their social contact, dropping our rate ..."

Central Otago was also highly vaccinated but so were some of the other districts so that could not be a major factor, he said

He noted the district had had its first back-to-back 100-plus recorded case days and Tuesday was the second highest daily total since the pandemic began.

"So the message is clear that, even though we don’t know why, Central Otago is truly in the grips of this thing while the rest of the country and many of the other districts around around us, are coming out.

"Everyone needs to be aware of that so there isn’t a false sense of security creeping in."

jared.morgan@odt.co.nz

 

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