New covid road map

There are 129 new covid cases in the community just after the Prime Minister revealed the Government’s new traffic light system to leave lockdowns behind.

Of those cases 120 are in Auckland and nine are in Waikato.

As at 9am yesterday, 64 of these cases are linked, of whom 25 are household contacts, and 65 remain unlinked with investigations continuing to help determine their connection to the current outbreak, the Ministry of Health said.

Because the outbreak is now more dispersed, testing in Auckland is now focused on areas with higher positivity rates and where the risk of unidentified cases is higher, the ministry said.

One suburb of interest with a high positivity rate of more than 7 per cent is Redvale, on the North Shore.

At this stage, no recorded cases in Redvale have been linked to last weekend’s well-reported party.

“We are asking Redvale residents with symptoms, no matter how mild, to get tested as soon as possible, even if they are vaccinated,” the ministry said.

We are also encouraging testing in New Lynn and the North Shore suburbs of Rosedale and Bayswater.”

There are 51 people in hospital with covid, including eight in North Shore, 18 in Middlemore, 24 in Auckland and one in Waikato.

Five people are in intensive care.

All nine new cases reported in the Waikato region yesterday have been contacted and are confirmed to have been linked to existing cases.

This brings the total number of confirmed cases in the region to 73.

There are still four Waikato cases deemed unlinked, with investigations continuing to help link them back to an existing case.

The ministry urged anyone in Waikato – in particular, people in Te Awamutu – to get tested if they have symptoms.

Five new covid cases have also been detected in returnees in managed isolation facilities.

Forty-eight of Thursday’s 102 cases were infectious in the community and had exposure events.

The other 54 cases on Thursday were in isolation during their infectious period.

Health teams are monitoring 2319 current contacts of covid cases.

Eighty-two per cent of these have been contacted by contact tracers to confirm they need to isolate and get a Covid test.

Seventy-five per cent have now had at least one test result returned.

There were 396 locations of interest as at 10am yesterday.

More than 41,000 vaccine doses were given out yesterday, including 10,066 first doses and 31,228 second doses.

That meant 86 per cent of the 6,516,515 Kiwis eligible for the vaccine, or 3,614,484, have now had a first dose, while 69 percent, or 2,902,031, have also had a second dose.

Sixty-eight per cent of Maori have had one dose, while 47 per cent or 268,989 have had a second dose also.

Meanwhile, public health officials in Waikato are continuing to investigate a local case who travelled to Hawke’s Bay before returning a positive covid-19 result.

One location of interest, Kmart Napier, has been identified and anyone there between 3.53pm5.13 pm on Friday, October 15 is asked to monitor their symptoms for 14 days and if any develop, get tested and stay at home until a negative test result is received and they have been symptom-free for 24 hours.

No further locations of interest in Hawke’s Bay have been identified but locals are asked to keep checking the Ministry of Health’s website.

There have been no positive detections for Covid-19 in the most recent wastewater samples collected from Hastings (October 19 and 20), Napier (October 18 and 20), and Wairoa (October 15 and 19).

Further samples from these sites will be collected next week, the ministry said.

New Zealand will move into the system to manage covid-19 when District Health Boards have 90 per cent of their eligible populations vaccinated.

The traffic light system will use vaccine certificates to allow complying businesses to continue to operate at all times – it should also end nationwide lockdowns, although the Government retains the right to use smaller, localised lockdowns. Case numbers have now been hopping around in recent days, with 94 cases on Tuesday and 102 cases on Thursday. Experts are tipping numbers to continue to grow.

Director general of health Ashley Bloomfield said yesterday that case numbers were doubling every 10 to 12 days. He said the key point was how many of those people who caught covid-19 were vaccinated.

Only 1.7 per cent of people hospitalised in the Delta outbreak have been vaccinated.

There are still about 150,000 eligible people in Auckland – and 616,000 eligible people nationwide – who are yet to get a single dose of the Pfizer vaccine.

Ninety-four of Thursday’s cases were in Auckland and eight were in Waikato, Bloomfield said.

Deputy PM Grant Robertson said “undoubtedly” there will be more cases emerging in Waikato.

Forty of Thursday’s 102 cases are not linked to the outbreak, while 30 are household contacts. Twenty of Wednesday’s cases also remain unlinked.

Bloomfield said a growing number of unlinked cases was to be expected, and the most important information was to find their contacts.