Invercargill has emerged as the South’s latest Covid-19 hot spot, yesterday recording more daily cases than Queenstown for the first time.
The 200 new cases surpassed the 175 reported in Queenstown-Lakes, and took Invercargill’s number of active cases past 1000, to 1090.
Nga Kete charitable trust chief executive Tracey Wright-Tawha said she had sensed for some days, due to the number of calls to the trust’s health and welfare services, that numbers were on the rise in Invercargill.
"I think that we are well on our way now and through referrals it is increasing on an exponential basis," she said.
"It is a big number of cases for a community like Invercargill which is a close-knit ecosystem.
"I think our community is doing the very best it can but I think that the beast of Covid is still really to impact us."
Overall case numbers reported across Otago and Southland yesterday were 890, a drop attributable to the Health Ministry changing its definition of the period of an active community case from 10 days to seven.
For the previous three days, the South has recorded more than 1200 new cases.
A further 290 cases were reported in Dunedin, 65 in Southland, 60 in Clutha, 45 in both Gore and Central Otago, and 35 in Waitaki.
Southern Covid planners are expecting case numbers to peak in the region in the next week or two, at a likely 1500 new cases a day.
While case numbers offer some perspective of how widespread the outbreak is, under-reporting of test results means public health clinicians believe the actual number of cases in the region is higher than reported.
Ms Wright-Tawha said as well as its own positive patients, Nga Kete was also supporting 60 people who were not enrolled in any GP practice.
"That number is going up on a daily basis, too, and we are also working with about 150 families who are isolating either clinically or via our welfare and wellbeing services ..."
Nationally, the Health Ministry reported 14,128 new community cases and 943 people in hospital, 25 of whom were in intensive care.
Five more deaths were recorded yesterday, in Auckland (2), Waikato, the Hutt Valley and Canterbury. In the South, 18 people were in hospital, 14 in Dunedin, three in Southland and one in Lakes.
