Jacinda Ardern’s resignation as prime minister in January was a courageous and pragmatic decision for herself, her family and her party.

Although many said she had done a great job as leader, she rightly reminded us that a great leader is “one who knows when it’s time to go”.

Since hitting stellar heights in mid-2020, Ardern’s Labour Party had dropped significantly in the polls and was trailing the opposition National Party throughout 2022.

• READ MORE: NZ election 2020: Jacinda Ardern promised transformation — instead, the times transformed her
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The “Jacinda effect” had switched from being a uniting force to a polarising one. With an election coming in October, it was time for a change.

Her decision to stand down was as politically astute and timely as her elevation to leader of the Labour Party in August 2017. After all, Labour is now ahead of National in recent polls.

By the time she gives her valedictory statement to parliament later today, Ardern will have served as an MP for nearly 15 years. While the intervening period has undoubtedly changed her, she remains in many ways the same person she was as a novice backbencher.

In her maiden speech to the House of Representatives in 2008, she expressed the small-town values that got her started:

Some people have asked me whether I am a radical. My answer to that question is very simple: I am from Morrinsville. Where I come from a radical is someone who chooses to drive a Toyota rather than a Holden or a Ford.

She described herself as a social democrat who believed in human rights, social justice, equality and democracy. She spoke especially about work, education, community and the reduction of poverty – child poverty in particular.

All fine aspirations. But back then, Ardern’s Labour Party was looking at nine long years in opposition after Helen Clark’s three-term government lost power.

Unable to break the run National’s John Key enjoyed as prime minister, Labour went through one leader after another while Ardern rose through the ranks.

In mid-2017, despite a mood for change, it still looked like the election wouldn’t go well for Labour, at the time polling down around 25 percent. Then, at the beginning of August, Andrew Little handed leadership of the party to Ardern. With just seven weeks until the election, it was either an inspired move or the ultimate hospital pass.

As history shows, however, Ardern’s elevation immediately energised Labour’s campaign. It also drew international attention to the New Zealand election, as what became known as “Jacindamania” changed the mood on the streets and in the media.

Accidents of history
Critics sometimes labelled Ardern the “accidental prime minister” — a rookie “appointed” by Winston Peters, whose New Zealand First party held the balance of power in post-election negotiations. Conventional wisdom has it that Ardern simply offered Peters a better coalition deal, despite her party having won fewer seats than National.

But Peters gave those critics some more ammunition during a recent TV interview. He appeared to reveal that New Zealand First was forced to choose coalition with Labour when then-National leader Bill English alerted him to a potential leadership coup by Judith Collins.

According to Peters, English had assured him Collins didn’t have the numbers to pull it off. (Collins would eventually become National leader, of course, losing spectacularly to Ardern at the 2020 election.)

This sliding-doors version of events may be conjecture. But Peters can’t have forgotten how Jenny Shipley had rolled previous National leader and prime minister Jim Bolger in 1997.

That ultimately led to the breakup of the National-New Zealand First coalition in which Peters had been deputy prime minister and treasurer.

Perhaps, then, we have Collins to thank for Ardern’s elevation to the top job. We’ll probably never know.

Rise and fall
The “Jacinda effect” wasn’t a flash in the pan, however. Labour’s election support went from 25 percent in 2014 to 37 percent in 2017, and then to an extraordinary 50 percent in 2020. Coming on the back of Ardern’s exemplary leadership through the covid pandemic, it was an unprecedented result under the country’s proportional MMP system.

Her belief in “kindness” as a political force appeared to have been vindicated, if not for long. While New Zealand eventually recorded the world’s lowest excess mortality rate during the pandemic, this success was far from cost-free. In particular, there was a human and political price to pay for the lockdowns and border closures.

Businesses struggled, many New Zealanders abroad couldn’t return, and many resisted the pressure to be vaccinated. No nation escaped unscathed, and in New Zealand resistance to vaccine mandates boiled over on the grounds of parliament in early 2022.

Some protesters were angered by Ardern’s trademark empathy and kindness, which they now perceived as a false front. Due to the extremist elements among the protests, she refused to address them directly.

Ardern’s positive leadership reputation was earned on her responses to tragedies: the Christchurch terror attack, the Whakaari-White Island eruption, and the pandemic. But no sane politician would have welcomed such crises.

Nor were they part of Ardern’s social democratic plan. In fact, they hindered it. She did a lot for child poverty and family incomes, in line with her core values. But those achievements were overshadowed by a pandemic response that upended her government’s fiscal policy.

Promise unfulfilled
So, if catastrophes were the making of Jacinda’s career as prime minister, they were also the breaking of it. From her first campaign speech in August 2017, she had created a sense of promise that her government was ultimately unable to fulfil.

She claimed climate change was her generation’s “nuclear-free moment”, and that a decent, affordable home was everyone’s right. It sounded great, but on both counts progress fell short of expectation and need. Later, she would capitulate on a full capital gains tax to help solve the housing crisis. That allowed coalition partner Peters to claim credit for the backdown.

But it would also be wrong if the lasting narrative was one of failure to deliver. Her government’s Child Poverty Reduction Act now mandates reporting on progress towards poverty targets, bringing the problem into the engine room of fiscal policy. The Healthy School Lunches program helped reduce food insecurity.

Future governments will encounter strong political resistance if they try to rescind those measures.

Even those tireless advocates for children, the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), gave Ardern qualified approval following her resignation — although the truce didn’t last long. CPAG was back on the attack when Stats NZ reported “child poverty rates for the year ended June 2022 were unchanged compared with the previous year”.

A complex legacy
In the end, Ardern did not use the single-party majority she won in 2020 to fix the things she had wanted to fix. When her government saw a problem, its default setting was to say “let’s centralise it” — as if that would do. Good social democratic government was sidelined by bureaucratic shakeups in healthcare, education and (before the plan was cancelled) public broadcasting.

An elaborate structural reform of water services became mired in controversy over Māori co-governance and loss of local democratic control. The sixth Labour government’s only potentially historic contribution to the development of New Zealand’s social security system — a proposed unemployment insurance scheme — was quietly shelved after criticism from both left and right.

So, will Ardern be remembered as one the great Labour leaders? To do so would put her in the pantheon of Michael Joseph Savage and Peter Fraser, who achieved so much in social security, healthcare and education, and who led the country through the Second World War.

It would also place her next to Norman Kirk, whose 1972-75 government universalised accident compensation, introduced the domestic purposes benefit, and stood against French nuclear testing in the Pacific.

Ardern with baby Neve in 2018, the second prime minister to give birth while in office.
Getty Images

It’s a high bar, but not unreasonable to make the case. Ardern broke through barriers for women, most notably giving birth to her daughter while she held office. She united the country after the mosque shootings, soothing what could have become a divisive moment.

By listening to the scientific evidence and advice about covid, she helped save countless lives.

Ardern will undoubtedly be remembered as one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s outstanding prime ministers. This may not be for reasons of her choosing, though. Once the disaster management is accounted for, there are no major lasting achievements for which her government will be cited in the history books.

What will be remembered is Ardern’s exemplary and highly effective leadership through covid. Yet there is no “kind” pathway through an unkind pandemic.

Nevertheless, Jacinda Ardern is owed gratitude for all that she did — and acknowledgement of all she had to endure — to get her nation through it.

Dr Grant Duncan is associate professor, School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Jacinda Ardern will largely be remembered in Aotearoa New Zealand as the prime minister whose pandemic-era policies saved thousands of Kiwi lives, according to former prime minister Helen Clark.

And she will also be considered an example of how to govern in the age of social media and endless crises, political experts say, while also achieving more than her critics might give her credit for.

Ardern was set to deliver her valedictory speech later today, having stepped down as prime minister earlier this year after just over five years in the job.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘You can’t help feeling sad about her going’ — Former prime minister Helen Clark
• View of political scientists Dr Bronwyn Hayward and Dr Lara Greaves
• Ex-PM Ardern named Christchurch Call envoy against online violence

“I think that while I’m happy for Jacinda that she’s going to get a life and design what she wants to do and when she wants to do it, you can’t help feeling sad about her going,” Clark, herself a former Labour prime minister, told RNZ Morning Report ahead of Ardern’s speech.

“Leaders like Jacinda don’t come along too often and we’ve lost one.”

Ardern has played down suggestions online vitriol played a part in her decision to stand aside — but acknowledged on Tuesday she hoped her departure would “take a bit of heat out” of the conversation.

Clark said she “fundamentally” believed the hatred got to Ardern, powered by “populism and division” generated by former US President Donald Trump and his supporters.

‘Conspiracies took hold’
“Conspiracies took hold and suddenly you know, as the pandemic wore on here, I think the sort of relentless barrage from America — not, not just through Trump himself and the reporting of him, but through the social media networks — we have the anti-science people, the people who completely distrusted public authority, the QAnon conspiracies and hey, it played out on our Parliament’s front lawn and it still plays out and it’s very, very vitriolic and divisive.

“So I think that that spillover impact was really quite, well, not just unpleasant — it was horrible.”

Researchers have found Ardern was a lightning rod for online hate.

The perpetrator of the 2019 mosque shootings used the internet to connect with and learn from other extremists, which led to Ardern setting up the Christchurch Call movement to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online.

Her post-parliamentary career will include continuing that work, as New Zealand’s Special Envoy for the Christchurch Call, reporting to her replacement, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins.

“The mosque murders was just the most horrible thing to have happen on anyone’s watch, and she rose to the occasion, and I think the international reputation was very much associated with initially the empathy that she showed at that time,” said Clark.

But “one of New Zealand’s darkest days”, as Ardern put it at the time, was not the only near-unparalleled crisis she had to deal with in her time as prime minister.

“The White Island tragedy was another that needed, you know, very empathetic and careful handling. But then comes covid, and there’s no doubt that thousands of people are alive today because of the steps taken, particularly in 2020.

‘Would we have survived?’
“You know, I mean, I’m obviously in the older age group now which is more vulnerable. My father is 101 now and has survived the pandemic. But would we have survived it if it had been allowed to rip through our community, like it was allowed to rip through others?

“I think that there’d be so many New Zealanders not alive today had those steps not been taken.”

Data shows New Zealand has actually experienced negative excess mortality over the past few years — the elimination strategy so successful, fewer Kiwis have died than would have if there was no pandemic.

Former Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said that was “unique, virtually unique around the world”.

Despite that, it was New Zealand’s aggressive approach towards covid-19 in 2020 and 2021 that arguably drove much of the polarisation and online vitriol.

“There’s no doubt that those measures did save lives. They also drove people into frenzied levels of opposition and fear and isolation,” said Clark. “They felt polarised, they felt locked out.”

But she said Ardern bore “very little” responsibility for that.

Political scientist Dr Bronwyn Hayward of the University of Canterbury said Ardern’s Christchurch Call to eliminate extremist content will have a long-lasting impact on not just New Zealand, but the world.

“There’s been a lot made about the fact that she resigned under pressure from the trolls, which is completely missing the point that what she’s saying is that in this era where we’ve got particularly Russian, but also other countries’ bots that are attacking liberal leaders,” Dr Hayward told Morning Report, saying Ardern was the first global leader to “really understand” how what happens online can spill over into the real world.

“She understands that democracies are now under attack, and the front line is your social media, where we’ve got a propaganda war coming internationally.

“So she’s taken a very systemic approach to thinking about how to tackle that, so that in local communities it feels like you’re reeling from Islamophobia, to racism to transphobia, but actually, when we look internationally at what’s happening, naive and quite disaffected groups have been constantly fed this material and she’s taken a systemic approach to it.”

Clark said one of the biggest differences in the world between Ardern’s time as prime minister and her own, was that she did not have to deal with social media.

“I didn’t have a Twitter account, didn’t know what it was really. We had texts, that was about it. We used to have pagers, for heaven’s sake.”

Ardern’s domestic legacy
One of the first things Hipkins did when he took over as prime minister was the “policy bonfire” — but critics have long said the Ardern-led government has had trouble delivering on its promises.

Interviewer Guyon Espiner reminded Clark that her government had brought in long-lasting changes like Working for Families, the NZ Super Fund and Kiwibank — asking her what Ardern could point to.

Clark defended Ardern, saying the coalition arrangement with NZ First in Ardern’s first term slowed any reform agenda she might have had, and then there was covid-19.

“Looking back, there needs to be more recognition that the pandemic blindsided governments, communities, publics around the world. It wasn’t easy.”

Dr Hayward pointed to the ban on new oil and gas exploration and child poverty monitoring, “which before that was ruled as impossible or too difficult”.

Dr Lara Greaves, a political scientist at the University of Auckland, said it was “incredibly hard to really evaluate” Ardern’s legacy outside of covid-19.

“Ultimately … she is the covid-19 prime minister.”

The future
Clark said Ardern would be emotional during her valedictory speech.

“You have very close relationships with colleagues, you have relationships with others of a different kind — with the opposition, with the media, with the public — and you’re walking away, you’re closing the door on it.

“But you know that a new chapter will open, and that life post-politics can be very rewarding. I’ve certainly found it so. I have no doubt that Jacinda will get back into her stride with doing things that she feels are worthwhile for the the general public and worthwhile for her.”

After losing the 2008 election, Clark rose the ranks at the United Nations. She said while that was an option for Ardern, there is plenty of time for the 42-year-old to do other things first.

“I was, you know, 58 when I left being prime minister. And Jacinda’s leaving in her early 40s and she has a young child, so who knows? She may want Neve to grow up with a good old Kiwi upbringing.

“And she may want her, you know, involvement internationally to be more, you know, forays out from New Zealand. That’s for her to decide. I mean, the world’s her oyster, if she chooses to follow that.”

Dr Greaves also pointed to Ardern’s relative youth.

“It seems like she’s going for a period of sort of recovery and reflection and figuring out what to do next. But of course, she’s got another 20 years in her career, at least — the world’s her oyster.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

As Jacinda Ardern gets ready to deliver her valedictory speech in the Parliament today, former prime minister Helen Clark says she will largely be remembered as the prime minister whose pandemic-era policies saved thousands of Kiwis’ lives. https://t.co/LhKPSZulpW

— RNZ (@radionz) April 5, 2023

On Friday I watched Ashley Bloomfield’s last afternoon health update. After all we’ve been through over the past couple of years, and the major role he had in communicating to us and keeping us safe, I’ve got to say I felt a bit emotional.

The end not of an era, sadly the virus is still very much with us, but in a way a part of what has been one of the major events in all of our lives.

His humble, calm, well informed voice was a great antidote to some of the stupidity that we saw overseas in the early days of the pandemic, I’m looking at you America, but sadly we see more and more of that here in Aotearoa.

• READ MORE: Other Nick Rockel articles at Asia Pacific Report

Maybe it was always there; I guess you’d have looked pretty stupid slagging the guy off in the comments section two years ago.

Not anymore apparently.

I was going to include some of the negative comments here from during his last briefing to demonstrate how full of hatred, conspiracy theories, and misinformation these people are. But when I went back and looked at them they just made me feel sad and I decided I didn’t want to repeat any of them even to mock them.

Of course the poisonous hatred and stupid fuelled negativity aimed at Dr Bloomfield on social media is minor compared to the Tsunami of Bile frothed by those attacking Jacinda for things like — it being her Birthday the other day.

Rewinding back
Isn’t it reassuring to know we live among people who see red fury at people wishing the Prime Minister a Happy Birthday, or a Doctor giving medical advice?

What must celebrations be like at their place?

“Don’t say Happy Birthday to that little bastard he hasn’t even finished putting 100 pins in his Jacinda and Ashley dolls yet”

“C’mon Kev he is only four!”

But let’s rewind back to the beginning, the early days of the daily update…

We were listening to scientists not business people. The messages were clear about putting our lives, our family’s lives, and the lives of those around us in the community first; the message wasn’t filtered through what CEOs or corporate sponsors wanted.

We were told saving lives mattered, washing hands mattered, and commerce would just have to wait for once as much of it was put into an induced coma until it was safe to listen to business people, or certain politicians, again.

The cryogenic switch
And who was flicking that great cryogenic switch, who was saying “don’t go to work stay at home and chill, if you’re able work online in your underpants” as if some deadbeat mate you knew in high school had turned up to stay indefinitely.

It was Dr Bloomfield.

Who told us of each new outbreak, scientific break through, the vaccine rollout, or sadly life lost?

It was Ashley. I’m sure we can all remember certain updates, I particularly remember the spread in a West Auckland old peoples home, which wasn’t far from us and brought it very close to home.

The youngest member of our household would listen to the updates hoping there would be an increase in numbers, not too many he didn’t want people to be ill, but just enough to keep schools closed a bit longer. Funnily enough he was less enthusiastic about the restrictions applying to football and dance classes.

Dr Bloomfield called those making racist comments about people infected with covid “gutless” — could he have been any more awesome?

And who could forget the day we went to zero community cases – what a day! It was like we had won the World Cup except it was something that actually mattered.

The Vaxathon spirit
A little later there was the Vaxathon that made those of us of a certain age fondly remember Telethons of old. It even remarkably captured some of that same spirit in the age of everything on demand — or maybe it was just us oldies that thought so.

We had this guy telling it like it is, the Doc was giving it to us straight. Of interest especially to we middle aged white guys was the fact here was a guy capturing the nation who if push came to shove and he had to take to the dance floor he’d probably dance a lot like us.

So what turned people?

Was it the positivity, the being well informed and not putting up with any nonsense? He didn’t outright mock “alternative theories” but it was pretty clear what he thought of them.

Was it standing alongside The Prime Minister the two singing in unison how we could all be kind in our socialist utopia that put people first?

Was it having certain media people and opposition politicians finding any angle to criticize the approach we were taking and attacking Dr Bloomfield for his performance? I remember one of the reporters at a press conference even asked him if he should offer his resignation.

Or was it having a nerd tell them whether they could go out and play with their friends and their toys or not?

The silent majority
It struck me, as it often has looking at comments; surely the silent majority are decent people grateful for how well we have been served by Dr Bloomfield. Is it really possible that this many people are filled with anger and disinformation, or are they just the loudest and actually mainly fake?

We saw people opposing health measures increasingly of course. First they were anti the vaccinations, then anti the mandates that were there to keep people safe and could so easily be avoided with a little prick.

Now that life is by and large back to normal, albeit with a disturbing number of daily cases and deaths, they are anti any ongoing measures — anti the wearing of masks!

People who genuinely believe, or at least claim, that masks not only don’t inhibit the spread of disease but will actually say until they are blue in the face that masks make the spread worse!

The mind goggles. Imagine if the anti-mask crowd took that approach to other areas of life?

“Don’t you throw that water on me everyone knows it only makes being on fire worse!”

What else do people decide — meh I’ve been doing this a couple of years I can’t be bothered any more?

Seat-belt lessons
We didn’t decide a couple of years after seat-belts were introduced that, you know what, people are still dying in car accidents so I’m not wearing one any more — in fact if you do your research you’ll find seat-belts make car crashes more dangerous!

People don’t say you know when I’m driving home tonight in the dark I’m going to go with Natural illumination – the light from the moon. No more artificial illumination for me, everyone knows this has worked for thousands of years.

Walking on the footpath instead of the road or wearing a parachute jumping from a plane? Not for them, you can only hope they’re wearing condoms.

Have these people always been around? Will they always be like this? Is this Darwin at work?

Evolution is painful to watch.

For the rest of us Covid hasn’t actually gone away but could it be that some us are already looking back to the height of the pandemic, the lockdowns as inconvenient as they were on occasion, as a better simpler time?

Getting our priorities right
A time when we got our priorities right of family and caring for each that doesn’t always occur?

A time of people over profits – it was a bit of an adventure – it didn’t feel much like it queuing in the rain for groceries, but in hindsight….

Didn’t he do well – Ashley, there he was yesterday getting a standing ovation, still smiling, still calm – he really did us proud!

Thank you Dr Bloomfield, we will remember what you did.

Nick Rockel is a “Westie Leftie with five children, two dogs, and a wonderful wife”. He is the publisher of The Daily Read where this article was first published. It is republished here with the author’s permission.

After guiding New Zealand through two and a half years of a pandemic, Dr Ashley Bloomfield’s time as Director-General of Health has come to an end.

We look back on some of the key moments during his time in the role:

• READ MORE: Dr Ashley Bloomfield steps down – he has earned his knighthood!
• Other reports on Dr Ashley Bloomfield

22 May 2018
Dr Ashley Bloomfield was named as the new Director-General of Health while he was serving as the acting chief executive of Capital and Coast District Health Board.

2019
The health system faced some big challenges in 2019. Dr Bloomfield fronted health responses to both a measles outbreak and the Whakaari/White Island disaster.

27 January 2020
“Kia ora koutou katoa, welcome to the Ministry of Health, thank you very much attending this briefing this afternoon. My name is Dr Ashley Bloomfield, I’m the Director-General of Health.”

After two and a half years of a pandemic, it is probably hard to remember a time when Dr Ashley Bloomfield needed to introduce himself.

Before New Zealand had its first case of covid-19, back when it was referred to simply as a coronavirus (WHO would name it covid-19 on 12 February 2020), Dr Ashley Bloomfield and Director of Public Health Dr Caroline McElnay held a media stand-up.

Like most of the early briefings, it was held at the Ministry of Health.

It was two weeks after the first confirmed case outside of China had been identified and across the ditch, Australia had four cases. There had been 56 deaths worldwide.

28 February 2020
Almost exactly one month later, New Zealand’s first covid-19 case was confirmed in someone that had returned from overseas.

Reminiscent of a format we would come to know more intimately as time went on, the evening news would cut to a live press conference where Dr Bloomfield and then-Health Minister David Clark would provide more details of New Zealand’s first case. (Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was in Australia at the time.)

The following day, supermarkets would see a rush of customers buying up toilet paper, hand sanitiser and tinned food.

March 2020
We would start to hear a lot more from Dr Bloomfield as the second, third and fourth (who had been at a Tool concert) cases of covid-19 were confirmed in early March.

By the end of the month New Zealand would be in lockdown and Dr Bloomfield had become a daily part of our lives.

“It did feel a little bit like I was having a performance review at one o’clock every day, broadcast live on television. But that’s as it should be — your job is to ensure that we’re being held accountable for our response,” he said.

Daily cases had jumped to numbers in the eighties and the briefings had shifted to the Beehive, against a backdrop of yellow and white striped Unite Against Covid-19 branding.

On 29 March, during the 1pm briefing, Bloomfield would announce New Zealand’s first covid-19 death.

4 May 2020
“No new cases”. For the first time since New Zealand went into level 4 lockdown on 25 March, Dr Bloomfield announced there were no new cases of covid-19. It would be a phrase we would hear more of as the first community outbreak would start to slow.

And it evoked such emotion that “There are no new cases of covid-19 to report in New Zealand today” came second place in Massey University’s Quote of the Year.

August 2020
In an effort to encourage people to test for covid-19, Dr Bloomfield had his first covid-19 PCR test while filmed at a community testing site.

“It was much less painful than tackling Billy Weepu on the rugby field a couple of weeks ago.”

*Raises eyebrows
With millions of people stuck at home in isolation watching daily media briefings, it was no surprise that Dr Bloomfield would find himself in meme-territory.

This was Dr Bloomfield’s response when he was asked about 5G in 2020:

And a year later when Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said people should go outside and “spread your legs”.

Festival debut
Who would have thought Dr Bloomfield would grace the main stage at Rhythm and Vines festival?

December 2020
Dr Bloomfield was awarded the New Zealand Medical Association’s highest accolade — The Chair’s Award

17 August 2021
The prime minister announced another nationwide lockdown after a case, assumed to be the delta variant, was detected. That meant the 1pm briefings, and daily doses of Dr Bloomfield, were back too.

22 September 2021
As New Zealand tackled the delta outbreak, Dr Bloomfield broke the news that we may never get to zero cases of covid-19.

A portrait pie of Dr. Ashley Bloomfield. Photo: Supplied / Devoney Scarfe

October 2021
During Super Saturday, Dr Bloomfield was caught on camera busting a move at one of the community events.

Dr Ashley Bloomfield’s dance moves.

6 April 2022
Announced he was stepping down.

“It seems we’re at a good point in terms of the pandemic, the response is shifting, I’m also confident that the system is in good hands with the changes that are afoot, and most certainly my family will be very pleased to have a little more of my time,” he said.

May 2022
Dr Bloomfield tested positive for covid-19 while he was at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland.

Professional history

• In May 2018, Dr Bloomfield was appointed the new Director-General of Health.
• Dr Bloomfield was the acting Chief Executive for Capital & Coast District Health Board from 1 January 2018.
• From 2015-2017, he was chief executive of the Hutt Valley District Health Board – the first clinician to lead the Hutt Valley District Health Board.
• In 2017 Dr Bloomfield attended the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme.
• Prior to becoming chief executive at the Hutt Valley DHB, Dr Bloomfield held a number of senior leadership roles within the Ministry of Health, including, in 2012, acting Deputy Director-General, sector capability and implementation.
• From 2012-15 he was Director of Service, Integration and Development and General Manager Population Health at Capital & Coast, Hutt and Wairarapa District Health Boards.
• From 1999-2008 he was a Fellow of the Australasian Faculty of Public Health Medicine. Since 2008 he has been a Fellow of the NZ College of Public Health Medicine.
• In 2010-2011 he was Partnerships Adviser, Non-Communicable Diseases and Mental Health at the World Health Organisation, Geneva.
• Dr Bloomfield obtained a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery at the University of Auckland in 1990.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

After leading the Aotearoa New Zealand’s covid-19 response for the last two years, Dr Ashley Bloomfield is stepping down from the role of director-general of health at the end of this month.

The softly spoken public servant became a household name early in the pandemic, his image gracing T-shirts, tote bags, mugs and even tattoos.

Having been appointed to the director-general role in mid-2018, Dr Bloomfield was officially set to finish his five-year tenure in June 2023 — but decided to resign from the “complex and challenging” role early.

• LISTEN TO RNZ SATURDAY MORNING: Kim Hill talks to Dr Ashley Bloomfield
• READ MORE: Other Dr Ashley Bloomfield reports
• Covid-19 update: 22 more deaths reported, with 7746 new community cases in New Zealand
• New Zealanders should be concerned about Monkeypox – epidemiologist

His last day on the job will be on Friday, July 29, at which time Dr Diana Sarfati will be acting Director-General of Health until a permanent appointee takes up the position.

Covid-19 cases have been inching upwards over the last several weeks but Dr Bloomfield said he was optimistic the wave will recede.

“We’ve seen over the last week it’s levelled off which is great,” he told RNZ Saturday Morning’s Kim Hill.

His plans for an epic “karaoke party” farewell were already derailed by the recent rise in Omicron cases, but he said caution is the way to go until things settle down.

Pandemic legacy
“I didn’t want my legacy in the pandemic to be taking out some of our tip-top politicians and the leadership of the health sector at a super-spreader event.”

But while Dr Bloomfield is leaving, the crisis he presided over is very much ongoing.

It was announced Friday that primary schools are expected to move from encouraging mask wearing to enforcing it again when Term 3 starts Monday.

While the change may be frustrating for some, covid-19 requires flexible responses, he said.

“I think there will be a high level of general acceptance of the role [masks] will play, especially through winter in the future.”

Dr Bloomfield himself caught covid-19 in May at a World Health Organisation conference in Switzerland, where he said he was surprised at the low level of mask wearing.

“There’s this talk about the rest of the world has moved on. Well, they might have moved on in terms of what they’re doing, but the virus hasn’t moved on. It’s creating just as much havoc as it has in the past.

Higher infection rates
“To think in the UK, they’ve got higher rates of infection and hospitalisation than we do even in the middle of summer, that’s something to worry about.

“There is a general commentary — not just in New Zealand but elsewhere — that we’re moving on, we’re living with covid.”

That’s premature, he said.

“The virus isn’t done with us yet. We’re still in a pandemic. The WHO [World Health Organisation] hasn’t withdrawn that categorisation and the virus continues to evolve,” he said.

“We’ve just got to keep our wits about us.”

Pressures ‘always there’
There have been many stories about the strain on emergency rooms and doctors and nurses the past few weeks, but Dr Bloomfield defended the response.

“The pressures that are on the health system now are always there and they’re not unique to New Zealand,” he said.

“I would say we were better prepared this winter than we’ve ever been any winter.

“We also knew that after two years of no flu, we would have a heavy flu season.”

Dr Bloomfield rejected claims that the health system was caught by surprise by the omicron surge.

“We certainly had time to prepare and did. But you can’t suddenly magic up a new workforce from somewhere, certainly not in a situation where a lot of that time the borders were closed, although we were getting new workers in from overseas.”

“Some of the commentary has suggested there are less staff now than there were,” but Dr Bloomfield said there had been a big increase between 2021 and 2022, including nursing and medical staff.

Shortages very localised
Dr Bloomfield said he did not dismiss the views of people on the ground, but said shortages were sometimes very localised.

“I might have a different view from the clinicians on the ground … What one particular clinician or service or institution or organisation might be experiencing might not be reflecting the experience across the system, which is the view I have.”

Dr Bloomfield said for example in the case of PPE, the problem was not supply but in getting the equipment to where it was needed.

“We also responded where we heard, ‘look, we can’t get this PPE here or there,’ then we made sure we would follow those particular problems up.”

There have also been concerns that Māori and Pasifika were not prioritised properly in the vaccine rollout.

Dr Bloomfield said border and health care staff and those over 65 were the first priority for the vaccine drive, but many Māori and Pasifika were also included in that uptake.

“For our first two months of the rollout of the over-65, our highest rates of vaccinations in that group was among Māori and Pasifika. It was ahead of non-Māori, non Pacific.

Younger Māori rates
“We knew that the group that would take the longest, probably because it required repeated effort to build trust, the longest to get higher rates among was our younger Māori. … And that’s the group where we had to put in a lot of extra effort and it took longer to get the rates up, but we did get there.”

That outreach had hopefully led more young Māori to take part in the health system, Dr Bloomfield said.

“There’s now over 100,000 people who previously were not in contact with the health care system who are now on the books because of the efforts that went in through that vaccination programme, so that’s a great legacy.”

Dr Bloomfield has stood at the podium dozens of times in the past couple of years, facing the country’s press as he updated the state of the pandemic for the nation. While at times it hasn’t been easy, he said he respects the media’s role.

“I have to say I’m a big fan of the media being able to do its job properly. It’s a fundamental pillar of strong democracy and it didn’t always feel that way when you were up there facing the music and something had gone wrong, which I had to a few times.

“But they’re doing their job and a big part of their job is making sure the government, including the public services, is accountable to the population.”

‘I was asking, why me?’

As his term as director-general ends, Dr Bloomfield said he’s not interested in becoming a thorn in the government’s side. He’d like to continue to work to improve deficiencies in the system, however: “In my mind the currency I’m interested in is influence.”

If he had known what the last few years held, would Dr Bloomfield have taken the job back in 2018?

“I have to say there were a few moments early on in the pandemic, I really questioned myself on that. I was asking, why me?

“This is a one-in-100 year pandemic and I’ve only got a five-year contract … bad timing,” he joked.

“You quickly forget the parts that were really tough and really challenging,” he noted.

“My abiding memory will be of what a privilege it was to be in this role at this time in this country. I have great hope for the future of this country based on my experience the last four years.”

But he’s still leaving the job a year early, although few would say he hasn’t put in the hard yards.

‘Given my all’
His last child recently left home, and he said: “I feel like I’ve given my all the last four years.”

With big changes happening in the structure of New Zealand’s health system, it seemed a good time to leave.

‘Very exciting’ time for health changes
Health NZ Te Whatu Ora replaced the country’s 20 district health boards at the start of July.

It’s one of the biggest overhauls in Aotearoa New Zealand history. Dr Bloomfield said he was hopeful for what it might bring.

“There are features of the change that I think are very exciting,” such as the establishment of the Māori Health Authority.

That said, he believes the DHBs served an important role in healthcare.

“The big challenge in any health system is getting this right balance between what’s done at a national or regional level and the responsiveness to local communities, and the DHB model allowed that in some part, that responsiveness to local communities.

“But it was very hard at times to get unity around things that were good for the system. I guess ultimately you’re looking for a system that’s unified but not uniform.

“Certainly Health New Zealand, in the way it’s been set up, is designed to try to get a better balance between that national and local delivery — and that’s a good thing.”

Optimistic about reforms
Dr Bloomfield said he was ultimately optimistic about the reform.

“There’s a risk that you can move the deck chairs around but nothing really changes. The reform has been carefully thought through.

“The proof’s always in the eating of the pudding, so it will be interesting to see how it plays out over the next few years.”

So if Ashley Bloomfield had not been a doctor, what might he have become?

“I always joke with my kids I would have been a police detective. Maybe that would’ve been another career direction.

“I really enjoy observing little bits of information and putting them together to create a picture.

“It served me well in my current career,” he said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Former Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins says his apology to journalist Charlotte Bellis does not extend to the Aotearoa New Zealand government’s MIQ system generally.

Bellis, a New Zealand journalist based in Afghanistan at the time, had gone public in January with her struggle to secure a spot in the managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) hotels while pregnant.

Hipkins publicly apologised to her in a statement this morning, admitting her MIQ application was deactivated in error and some of his comments about her case had been wrong.

• READ MORE:  Chris Hipkins apologises to Charlotte Bellis for comments on MIQ application
• Other MIQ reports

He later told reporters there was no settlement payment involved, and both parties wanted to leave the matter behind them.

“We’ve concluded the matter. I’ve conveyed to her privately and now publicly my apology and she’s indicated she wants to leave it at that — and I’m happy to do that too,” he said.

“Right at the beginning, clearly there were a few things that got lost in communication, lost in translation. I do regret that and so my apology in that sense is a very genuine one.”

Hipkins was removed from the covid-19 portfolio just over a week ago, taking over police instead, with Dr Ayesha Verrall taking over the pandemic response.

Timing of the apology
He said the timing of his apology to Bellis had been agreed with her.

“She indicated that’s the timing that she wanted,” he said. “Obviously it would have ideally been better to have had this done before I gave up the covid portfolio rather than the week after, but ultimately MIQ’s been winding down now since February so I think everybody’s moved on from it.

“She indicated that she wanted something more public. I was happy to do that, it took a little bit of time to negotiate that and to get all of that ironed out.”

The National and ACT parties urged the government to also apologise over the handling of MIQ generally.

National’s Covid-19 Response spokesperson Chris Bishop said if Hipkins could apologise to Bellis, “then the government can surely apologise to all the Kiwis caught up in the lottery of human misery that was MIQ”.

“The High Court has found that MIQ unjustifiably breached New Zealanders’ rights from September to December 2021. The government should do the right thing and apologise for the way MIQ operated,” he said.

“There are countless other examples that haven’t hit the headlines. Other pregnant women who couldn’t return home. Kiwis trapped offshore who watched their visas expire in the countries they were in. People who missed the deaths of cherished loved ones and the birth of new lives.”

‘Caught out spinning’
ACT leader David Seymour said the government was not apologising for the misery its policy caused, just getting caught out spinning it.

“The government has rightly apologised for spreading misinformation about a citizen’s personal circumstances, now it should apologise for running MIQ selection so inhumanely and running it four months longer than necessary at enormous cost to the taxpayer and economy,” he said.

He said then Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield had advised MIQ was no longer necessary in December last year, and the government should be apologising for the $178 million it cost to maintain through to March.

“Included in that period was Charlotte Bellis’ repeated failed attempts to get a spot, forcing her to seek refuge with the Taliban,” he said.

Hipkins said they were very different matters.

“In this particular case there were some aspects of the information that I released that were incorrect and so I absolutely have acknowledged that and have apologised for that. In terms of MIQ I will maintain — and the courts in fact have maintained — MIQ was absolutely justified,” he said.

“What the court did find … the way we allocated space in MIQ wasn’t right. We tried a number of different things during that time to try different booking systems, to try and make that system fairer.”

Not contesting court ruling
He said he acknowledged the court’s ruling and was not contesting it, but repeated that the system as a whole was justified.

“Were MIQ ever to have to happen again in the future then those responsible for it would have to find a different way of allocating space within MIQ — but MIQ itself was absolutely justified.

“It’s the reason that we were able to go as long as we did without having covid-19 in the community.

“It’s also the reason why over the summer break, people managed to have a summer break and were able to have that opportunity to get their boosters before omicron arrived in the community.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Her daughter Neve tested positive on Wednesday, she added in the post. Her partner Clarke Gayford tested positive on Sunday.

“Despite best efforts, unfortunately I’ve joined the rest of my family and tested positive for covid-19,” Ardern wrote on social media.

• READ MORE: Covid-19 update: 29 deaths, 7441 new cases in New Zealand

Reports of her covid status follow a statement yesterday by Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield that thousands of new cases of covid-19 were being reported every day in New Zealand, but this was likely to be half of the number of actual cases.

With a further 29 deaths with covid-19 and 7441 new cases yesterday, Dr Bloomfield said the impact of the severity of omicron was still visible.

Prime Minister Ardern has been symptomatic since Friday night, according to a statement, and has “moderate” symptoms. She returned a weak positive Friday night and a clear positive this morning on a RAT test.

Ardern will be required to isolate until the morning of Saturday May 21.

Missing the Budget
Ardern, who has been isolating since Gayford tested positive, will now have to miss the Budget announcement on Thursday and the release of the government’s Emissions Reduction Plan on Monday.

“There are so many important things happening for the government this week,” she wrote.

“I’m gutted to miss being there in person, but will be staying in close touch with the team and sharing some reckons from here.

“To anyone else out there isolating or dealing with covid, I hope you take good care of yourselves!”

Ardern’s upcoming travel to the United States, scheduled for late May, will go ahead as planned at this stage. She is scheduled to give the commencement speech at Harvard University on May 26.

Former Labour Party president Mike Williams hopes she will be well enough to travel.

“After two years of isolation, internationally she’s a rock star attraction, and it does the country a hell of a lot of good to get her out and about.”

Williams said Ardern, 41, was young and fit, so should be fine.

Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson will take the post-cabinet press conference on Monday.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Aotearoa New Zealand’s outgoing Director of Public Health says the quick sharing of scientific information and the widespread use of masks have both been critical parts of the country’s public health response.

Dr Caroline McElnay, who is leaving the role shortly, presented the regular covid-19 update with Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield for the final time yesterday and gave her view on the pandemic response over the past couple of years.

She is stepping down from the role in the same week Dr Bloomfield announced he would also soon be leaving his role.

• READ MORE: Covid-19 update: 10 further deaths, 626 in hospital, 9906 new cases
• Other NZ covid outbreak reports

Dr McElnay had been in the job for five years and is travelling to Europe, but plans to come back to New Zealand. She said she is looking forward to going hiking — on long walks without cell phone coverage.

Dr McElnay said the country had learned a lot since New Zealand first went into lockdown more than two years ago.

Masks had become part of daily lives and would continue to remain an important tool, she said.

“They are a critical aspect of our public health response.”

Pandemic sped up science
The pandemic had changed the way many people worked, and also sped up science, she said.

“Scientists effectively show progress through publishing scientific papers, which makes the information then available to the science and health communities,” she said.

“Pre-covid that process often took months, but during covid it was clear sharing information was key. Information that could help understand the science behind the pandemic and assist in tackling it needed to be fast, so it could be used equally quickly.

“Applying that knowledge, which has improved as time has gone on, has held New Zealand in good stead.

“Vaccines and treatments that are effective at keeping people out of hospital were developed fast and advances in tracking and testing were equally quick.”

Watch the covid-19 update

This had allowed the fast spread of information to the scientific community and the public within days.

There had been frequent changes in advice and approach as experts and officials learnt more, she said.

New Zealand was very fortunate to have had a solid foundation of trust by the public in the country’s institutions, but she said she was also aware of the impact the pandemic had had on many people’s lives.

She noted there has also been a rise in misinformation, so officials had worked to increase the amount of trustworthy information available to the public.

She said the media standups would continue. This was her 299th in two years, she said.

Dr McElnay said she would travel overseas for some months. She said she was honoured to have held the role of director of public health.

“I want to finish by thanking you all, all New Zealanders, in getting us to where we are today on what has been a rollercoaster of a ride. And I’d also like to thank you in this room, the media, for your extensive coverage throughout the pandemic, helping to keep the public informed.”

Timing of departures
Dr Bloomfield said there had been speculation in the past 24 hours about the timing of his and Dr McElnay’s departures. He said Dr Jim Miller had already joined to act in the public health role while Dr McElnay’s replacement was appointed, while Dr Bloomfield himself would remain for four months.

The response to the virus had been a huge undertaking for many people, but “having said that Dr McElnay has been instrumental, and often the public face of the ministry’s response”, he said.

“A mammoth effort indeed. Personally I just want to fully acknowledge Dr McElnay’s calm and supportive and solution-focused approach over the last five years, but in particular she’s been a real rock for me over these past two years.”

Dr McElnay said she took on the role five years ago and decided at the time that five years would be a good length of time, and it had been challenging.

She said she got quite a few comments about her hair, and tried to avoid engaging with social media.

She personally did not feel burnt out but said burnout was a very real thing and workplaces and employees themselves needed to acknowledge that.

“Talk to your family and friends and talk to your health professionals.”

Collaboration ‘awe-inspiring’
A highlight of her time was seeing public health experts come together to come up with a plan back when covid-19 first struck our shores, she said.

Seeing the advice she and her colleagues gave be announced as official decisions reinforced the weight of responsibility that came with her job. She said it was “awe inspiring”.

The death toll in New Zealand had been staggeringly low — 466 as at today — and while every death was a tragedy, New Zealand had “such an amazing response”, she said.

“Every country has responded differently according to the context of that country.”

It was really the early closing of the borders as an island nation that really allowed such a strong response, she said.

Dr Bloomfield said the health system was now having to gear up to switch from responding to the acute illness from covid-19, to a longer-term care for people who have long-term symptoms.

Pressure on the healthcare system due to covid-19 was now easing.

Case numbers declining
The overall situation was improving, and as case numbers continue to decline it will also mean fewer staff members being off work, he said.

DHBs all have plans for how to catch up on care that has been deferred and ensure it is delivered, he said.

He was concerned enough about the possibility of a perfect storm of winter illnesses as well as covid-19 to have prepared a plan to prevent that.

Advice on a fourth booster was going to ministers this week, he said.

“The groups that other countries are offering a fourth dose to are largely older people and immunocompromised people of all ages.”

Dr Bloomfield also said he wanted to mark yesterday as World Health Day, the anniversary of the founding of the WHO in 1948.

• Ten new deaths were reported today — including someone aged between 10-19 — while the daily number of new community cases in New Zealand has dropped back below the 10,000 mark.
• There were 9906 new community cases reported today, down from the 11,634 community cases reported yesterday, while the number of people in hospital has dropped from 654 yesterday to 626 today, including 17 people in ICU.
• The death toll of people who have died with covid-19 is now 466.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Health workers in Aotearoa New Zealand are thanking Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield for his work stopping the ailing health system from collapsing in the covid-19 pandemic — and for saving lives.

They say they can relate to him needing a rest.

Dr Bloomfield leaves his job in July, stepping down 12 months early after the huge stress of the past two years.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘We have had the best outcome in the pandemic in the world and that’s down to good leadership’ – Professor Rod Jackson
• A salute to Dr Ashley Bloomfield from a bitter and ungrateful nation of moaners and feral lunatics
• Covid-19 update: 13 further deaths, 639 in hospital, 11,634 new cases
• Other NZ covid-19 outbreak reports

There are few public servants who have had the same degree of fame.

For two years he has been a regular in the living rooms of the country, particularly in the first lockdown when almost everyone was home turning in every day to hear news of the covid-19 threat.

Emergency doctor and chair of the Council of Medical Colleges Dr John Bonning said Dr Bloomfield had to step up to communicate with the public in a role that would normally have been done by politicians.

He exuded trust and had stellar public health credentials, as a medical doctor who had worked for the World Health Organisation and headed a district health board (DHB), Dr Bonning said.

Engaged and communicated
He engaged and communicated very regularly with health worker groups.

“He felt the pain, he felt the pressure along with the rest of us,” he said.

Frontline GP and chair of the Pacific GP Network Api Talemaitoga said the country was lucky to have a director-general with top public health skills when they were needed most.

That meant Dr Bloomfield understood the practicalities of what had to be done — like limiting numbers, mass masking, vaccination programmes and the importance of communication, he said.

Covid-19 Minister Chris Hipkins said Dr Bloomfield’s advice had been at the heart of the government’s decision making and he “had saved thousands if not tens of thousands of lives”.

But not everything was perfect under his tenure. There was a blunder that meant high-risk border workers were not being routinely tested as promised, criticisms about spread in MIQ facilities, delays at times over testing, and a slow vaccine rollout for Māori.

Delays over Māori health autonomy
Te Whānau O Waiapareira chief executive John Tamihere said the director-general had done a decent job but he was uncomfortable with the “idolatry” that had sprung up around him.

He had called Dr Bloomfield out over the past two years on issues like the delays giving Māori health groups autonomy to look after their communities, and of the ministry’s initial failure to hand over health data.

It would be mean-spirited to criticise Dr Bloomfield on his way out, he said.

He was a highly-paid public servant who had done a decent job, particularly for mainstream New Zealand, but his copybook was not completely clean, Tamihere said.

“But … Dr Bloomfield will go down as leading a great result when compared with other nations,” he said.

Pacific health groups had shared the concerns about not initially being able to lead the response for their communities, who bore the brunt of early waves of the virus.

Privy to the big picture
GP Dr Api Talemaitoga said while that was frustrating, he and his colleagues on the frontline were not always privy to the big picture Dr Bloomfield was dealing with “in terms of the whole country, the ministry, and his political masters”.

Senior emergency doctor Dr Kate Allan represents the College of Emergency Medicine and said Dr Bloomfield inherited a “broken health system” but led a response that stopped it from collapsing under the weight of covid-19.

“I take my hat off to him. I think it’s been an amazing job and an incredibly difficult job and I can’t imagine how tired he must be,” she said.

Dr Bloomfield is, in turn, quick to credit people like Dr Allan who worked on the frontline to battle the virus.

‘Relentless’
The director-general of health was one of three top health chiefs to announce their resignations yesterday.

Director of Public Health Caroline McElnay and Deputy Director of Public Health Niki Stefanogiannis are also leaving the ministry.

Health Minister Andrew Little told RNZ Morning Report they had been at the forefront of the covid-19 response and had worked tirelessly. “As Ashley said to me in the weekend, he is just exhausted.”

Thousands of front line health workers had done a phenomenal job and would be feeling the same after two years of the pandemic, he said.

There was still work to be done in terms of the rebuild and the nationwide health restructure “because we’ve got to create that extra capacity.”

“I am committed to filling the gaps that are there.”

‘Saved thousands of lives’
Epidemiologist Professor Rod Jackson said the key leadership group including Dr Bloomfield, the prime minister, senior ministers and others “saved thousands of lives, it saved our health services”.

“The work that they did over the past couple of years, it’s just relentless.” Jackson said. “I’m amazed that they lasted so long.”

All three were there at the most important stage but it was “a bit worrying” they were leaving. “The next phase is going to be messy, it’s going to be more political.”

However, New Zealand had “fantastic” vaccines and the knowledge on how to slow down and contain a pandemic.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

A leading epidemiologist says Aotearoa New Zealand has no idea how many community cases of covid-19 there are in the country because so many people are not recording their rapid antigen test (RAT) results.

University of Auckland Professor Rod Jackson said an upgrade of the testing system and My Covid Record is desperately needed.

His comments follow the leak of a memo from the Northern Region Health Co-ordination Centre (NRHCC) to health providers in the Auckland region on March 26.

• READ MORE:  Covid-19 update: 12,575 new community cases, 654 people in hospital, 15 further deaths
• Covid-19 briefing: ‘The system is in good hands’ – Dr Ashley Bloomfield
• Other NZ covid outbreak reports

The memo states:

“The MoH shared the following with us this week: in the last month we have distributed 50 million RATs into the system and so far less than 1 million results have been reported.”

The memo goes on to mention the increased number of false positives and negatives that occur with RATs (compared to PCRs) and the need to shift towards more PCR testing immediately.

Professor Jackson said the fact that so many people are not recording their covid-19 RAT results means the Ministry of Health’s daily case numbers are meaningless.

“Those numbers clearly demonstrate that expecting people to report the results of self-administered RAT tests was never going to happen on a consistent basis,” he said. “They are only reliable if they are done by trained people and recorded.”

Looking at hospitalisations
Professor Jackson said he did not even even look at the daily case numbers.

“I look at the hospitalisations and, sadly, the number of deaths,” he said.

But Professor Jackson said, in the middle of an omicron outbreak, a switch back to PCR testing might not be feasible due to the sheer number of people who would need to be tested.

“And my concern is people have got so used to easy access to RATs and now they wouldn’t want to wait in line.”

He said RATs are a tool to help slow down the spread of omicron, but their accuracy can be as low as 50 percent.

Auckland University associate professor of public health and Associate Dean Pacific Dr Collin Tukuitonga agrees that poor recording of RAT results highlights the shortcomings of the Ministry of Health’s daily case numbers.

“The reality is we have no idea of the real numbers because people are either not getting tested or, if they are, they aren’t recording their results,” he said.

Real case numbers far higher
“Some people say the real case numbers could be two or even four times higher.”

He said looking at the overall trend shows case numbers are declining in Auckland.

“But in terms of absolute numbers, we have no idea.”

A Ministry of Health spokeswoman said it has continued to monitor and review its approach to testing throughout the outbreak.

She said RATs are the ministry’s preferred testing method as they can be done at home, the results are available quickly and, when people upload their results, they provide an insight into the spread and size of an outbreak.

“We are still undertaking some PCR testing. However, this is mainly focused on priority populations and those individuals who are at higher risk of the effects from covid-19.”

According to the Ministry of Health, from February 22 to April 4 it has distributed 61.6 million RATs nationwide and between December 13 and April 5, a total of 1,614,110 million results have been recorded.

Local Democracy Reporting is a public interest news service supported by RNZ, the News Publishers’ Association and NZ On Air. Asia Pacific Report is a community partner.

RNZ News

Aotearoa New Zealand’s Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield — the man who has tirelessly steered the country’s covid-19 pandemic response for the past two years — is stepping down from his role at the end of July.

Public Service Commissioner Peter Hughes revealed Dr Bloomfield’s decision in a statement today.

Dr Bloomfield had signalled to the commissioner late last year he intended to step down before his term officially ended on 11 June 2023, Hughes said.

• READ MORE:  Covid-19 update: 12,575 new community cases, 654 people in hospital, 15 further deaths
• Covid-19 briefing: ‘The system is in good hands’ – Dr Ashley Bloomfield
• Other NZ covid outbreak reports

Speaking at today’s media briefing, Dr Bloomfield said he was most proud of the way the health system and public service had worked so well together to protect the public.

He said the three previous director-generals had also ended their five-year terms early, and he had been thinking for a while about when would be a good time to step down.

“It seems we’re at a good point in terms of the pandemic, the response is shifting, I’m also confident that the system is in good hands with the changes that are afoot, and most certainly my family will be very pleased to have a little more of my time.”

The Ministry of Health today reported 12,575 new community cases of covid-19, with 654 people in hospital and 15 further deaths. Twenty three people were in intensive care, down from 30 yesterday.

Outstanding job
Commissioner Hughes said Dr Bloomfield had done an outstanding job leading the government’s health response to covid-19 and the vaccination rollout.

“Dr Bloomfield has worked tirelessly for more than two years to keep New Zealanders safe from coronavirus,” Hughes said.

“Dr Bloomfield has demonstrated remarkable resilience and courage in leading the health system’s overall response to Covid-19. That response has saved lives.

“I thank Dr Bloomfield for his commitment to public service, his spirit of service to the community and his exceptional contribution to New Zealand’s covid-19 response. I know many New Zealanders will also be thankful for the job he has done.”

Hughes said Dr Bloomfield wanted to stay on until the country had a good hold on the virus, and that time was now.

In a post on Facebook, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Bloomfield had been a true public servant in every sense, through his dedication, drive and calmness.

“He has been central to our COVID success as a nation, and he’s done it with humour and grace (I’ll keep the details of his sporadic mockery of me to myself!),” she said.

“When we spoke about his decision to move on, he mentioned that he wanted to spend time with his family, and that’s the least we owe him. So kia ora from across the Motu, Dr Bloomfield. We thank you.”

‘Give the man a beer’
Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins also posted on Facebook after the news was released, acknowledging Bloomfield for being a “reassuring figure” through the pandemic response.

“The amount of pressure he’s absorbed, and the level of commitment he’s shown over the past two years make that an easy decision to understand.

“We thank you Ashley for all you’ve done to keep us all safe. Give the man a beer, he’s truly earned it!”

As a Minister I want to thank Dr Bloomfield for advising the Govt on some of the most important decisions taken in peacetime.
As a doctor I want to acknowledge @AshBloomfield as a colleague who has made an unparalleled contribution to protecting the health of New Zealanders.

— Ayesha Verrall (@drayeshaverrall) April 5, 2022

An acting director-general will be appointed before Bloomfield finishes on 29 July, 2022.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Aotearoa New Zealand will remain at the red covid-19 traffic light setting, says Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

Ardern made the announcement at today’s post-cabinet media briefing.

She said the rolling average of cases had declined 36 percent in the two weeks since the government refined the traffic light system.

• READ MORE: Covid-19 update: Nine further deaths and 10,205 new community cases
• Māori dying with covid-19 because of misinformation, says health leader
• Other NZ covid outbreak reports

There had been early data showing an uptick since mid-March in people visiting places of retail and recreation in Auckland, as well as more people returning to workplaces, she said.

While cases were dropping in Auckland, Wellington and Tairāwhiti, others region like Canterbury, Northland and Waikato were not experiencing the same drop. Hospitalisations in some DHBs were not expected to peak until mid- to late-April.

“So for now, New Zealand will remain at red,” Ardern said.

“I know there is an eagerness to move to orange, but we are still frankly amid an outbreak and there is still pressure across our hospital network.”

Nine further deaths
The Ministry of Health today reported 10,205 new community cases of covid-19 and nine further deaths.

There are now 734 people in hospital, including 25 in ICU or HDU.

In a statement, the ministry said the seven-day rolling average of case numbers was continuing to decline — down to 13,218 from last Monday’s 16,102.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said health officials would not be looking at a specific number of hospitalisations when advising a move down to the orange setting, but would rather be considering capacity and pressure levels, which also includes staffing at hospitals.

The next review of the traffic light settings will be on Thursday, April 14.

The country will remain at the red Covid-19 traffic light setting, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says.

Ardern made the announcement at today’s post-Cabinet media briefing from about 4pm.

Based on health advice
Ardern said the decision today was based on health advice, and the government did not want to move too quickly and lose the progress made.

“It’s less about the case numbers and more about the hospitalisations.”

Asked why Auckland could not move to orange when cases were falling, Ardern said that while there was a decline in hospitalisations, “it is off a high base, the numbers are still relatively high, the pressure on our system is still there, we want to make sure that we’re in the best possible position and we don’t lose the gains we’ve worked so hard for.

“We’ve always said that there is the possibility of moving regions to different levels at different times … but as we’ve said, Auckland has made significant progress but we do still have a relatively high hospitalisation rate.

“We need to look after our healthcare workforce.”

The country needed to help the health system recover and be ready for the expected winter surge, Ardern said, requesting that people get boosted.

“Unvaccinated and people that are not boosted make up a disproportionate number of people in our hospitals. More than 9900 people are due their booster today, please get your booster as soon as you can.”

Looking at overall trends
Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins told RNZ Checkpoint tonight there were a range of considerations cabinet would have to take account of in its April 14 review.

“We’re obviously looking at the overall trends … how many new hospital admissions as well as those who are in hospital – but also the demographics,” he said.

Covid-19 Minister Chris Hipkins on border opening. Video: RNZ

“We look at something called case weightings because not every hospitalisation is equal, some are in and out of hospital much quicker than others.

“If you think about it from an economic perspective only, the last thing I think people want to see is a sudden surge in cases which puts more people at home, more people having to isolate, because ultimately from a business perspective that’s bad for business as well, it means fewer staff and fewer customers.”

Dr Bloomfield said the weight of advice from paediatricians and other child-health experts and epidemiologists suggested they thought New Zealand had done a good job in protecting children, including being among the first to bring in covid-19 vaccinations for children.

Many district health boards (DHBs) had more than 90 percent of Māori double vaccinated, and booster vaccination rates for Māori, Pasifika and others was very similar in the more vulnerable 65+ age groups, he said.

The covid-19 vaccination programme — including its infrastructure, capacity, and capability — has been transferred across to help the population catch up on MMR and other vaccines, Dr Bloomfield said.

Fourth dose advice
He had received advice on a fourth Pfizer dose and that would be going to ministers very shortly, he said.

“The evidence is still emergent on this … what I would say is that it’s clear that it’s most important for those high-risk groups.”

Ardern said New Zealand’s covid-19 record still stood among the best in the OECD.

“No country has got away without being impacted by covid but in New Zealand the impact on us has been less than most countries we compare ourselves to.”

Meanwhile, Ardern said there “absolutely” was work under way to prepare for any new variants.

Aotearoa had a range of tools that had been kept “in the wings” should we need them, such as mandates, passes and the alert levels system.

Hipkins said the decision to keep New Zealand at red was not informed by the emergence of the new covid variant XE, which will likely come across the border as it opens.

Tracking new variants
“We’re tracking any emergence of new variants internationally very closely. So yes, that hasn’t had an impact on this particular decision because the information there is still very new about new variants, but we’re monitoring that very closely.”

The National Party wants the traffic light system scrapped completely.

The prime minister told RNZ Morning Report vaccine mandates and the traffic light system had made a big difference but said the first omicron peak had passed in parts of the country.

She warned it was only the first wave of omicron and there would be more waves and new variants coming.

Ardern said precautions that were known to be effective in preventing the spread of covid-19, such as mask use and gathering restrictions, would continue to be required, even if it was decided that parts of the country could move to the orange setting.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Zealand’s number of people in hospital with covid-19 continues to fall, but there have still been 13,475 new cases in the community and 17 more deaths reported today.

There are now 764 people in hospital, down from 830 yesterday, with 31 people in intensive care, reports the Ministry of Health.

Yesterday, there were 15,250 cases reported, and 22 deaths.

• READ MORE: First covid-related death recorded in Samoa
• Vanuatu records first covid-related deaths

The seven-day rolling average of case numbers has also continued to decline, with today’s rolling average at 14,171 cases, compared to last week’s 17,197 cases.

The 17 new deaths of people with covid-19 include two in their 50s, four in their 60s, five people in their 70s, three in their 80s and three over 90. Fifteen were male and two were female.

Seven were from the Auckland region, two from Waikato, one from Bay of Plenty, one from Lakes DHB (district health board), one from Hawke’s Bay, one from the Wellington region, one from Canterbury, one from the West Coast, and two from Southern.

The deaths being reported today include people who have died over the past seven days, including 15 in the past two days. The total number of reported deaths with covid-19 is now 355.

Auckland new cases falling
The number of new cases in Auckland has continued to fall, with 2392 cases today, down from 2708 yesterday. The remaining cases are in the Northland (563), Waikato (1182), Bay of Plenty (688), Lakes (355), Hawke’s Bay (712), MidCentral (774), Whanganui (332), Taranaki (526), Tairāwhiti (172), Wairarapa (155), Capital and Coast (876), Hutt Valley (483), Nelson Marlborough (578), South Canterbury (267), Southern (1243) and West Coast (56) DHBs.

There were also 49 new cases reported at the border. There have now been 671,254 cases of covid-19 confirmed in New Zealand.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield yesterday said one third of all current cases were in children and teenagers.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

One third of all current cases in Aotearoa New Zealand are in children and teenagers, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield revealed at today’s update on the omicron covid-19 outbreak.

Dr Bloomfield gave an update on the omicron outbreak and was joined via Zoom by University of Otago’s Professor Peter McIntyre from the department of women’s and children’s health.

Dr Bloomfield said 14.4 percent of current cases of covid-19 were aged under nine and 17.4 percent were between 10 and 19.

• READ MORE: Covid-19 update: 22 further deaths, 15,250 new community cases, 830 people in hospital
• Other NZ covid outbreak reports

The Ministry of Health reported today there had been 15,250 new cases of covid-19 in the community and 22 more deaths.

Professor McIntyre said that even though omicron was less severe, because there were more cases, health professionals — particularly in Auckland — were seeing more cases in tamariki.

He said early evidence from the US showed that in a group of 1000 children, those who had two doses of a vaccine had a statistically significantly reduced chance of getting an infection, but it was not as high as they had hoped.

Another study looking at 10,000 children turning up at an emergency department found that two doses cut back emergency department presentations more effectively — by about 50 percent.

He said the vaccine for 5-11 year olds was an insurance policy worth taking up.

Random selection
From late January, text messages had been sent to a random selection of the parents of vaccination children, Dr Bloomfield said.

“For the first vaccination, there were 800,300 respondents and very similar to the Australian data 18 percent reported some sort of side effect post-vaccination. For the second dose the equivalent figure was 24 percent,” he said.

“Most common were reaction at the injection site, headache and fatigue. All expected and commonly reported side effects that pass quickly.”

Less than half a percent for both first and second dose had any need to seek medical advice or care, he said.

Dr Bloomfield said the rates of paediatric vaccination were similar to what was happening in other places in the world.

Dr McIntyre said there were two major issues: access and parents who were not yet convinced

“I think we need to keep pushing the notion, particularly about the safety of the vaccine.”

Comfortable with vaccine
Parents are reasonably comfortable with the vaccine but some indicated they were waiting a month or two for the safety data, Dr Bloomfield said.

“We can really reassure parents this is a really safe vaccine for children.’

By far the most common locations for children getting vaccinations was a local pharmacy and a local GP, Dr Bloomfield said.

On vaccination post-covid infection, Dr Bloomfield said they were recommending a wait of three months from the date someone tests positive. This stood for all age groups and all stages of vaccination and all vaccines.

It has been nine weeks since omicron was first recorded in New Zealand and cases have peaked nearly everywhere but, with the wave roughly moving south, rural Southland looks to be last in line.

Canterbury has become the country’s covid-19 hotspot, with the rates of new infections.

Despite that, epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker believes Canterbury and South Canterbury appear to have passed their peaks.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

A Whanganui iwi leader says the Aotearoa New Zealand government’s decision to ease covid-19 measures at this time is a disgrace and shocking.

He is warning Māori to stay vigilant against omicron and prepare for more to come.

Tūpoho chair Ken Mair says Māori must continue to be extremely careful and take precautions against covid-19, despite the government’s new strategy to begin living with the virus.

• READ MORE: Covid-19: Māori now have highest rate of community cases in Aotearoa – Bloomfield
• Covid-19 update: 11 more deaths, 18,423 new community cases today
• Other NZ covid outbreak reports

Yesterday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said gathering limits would ease before the weekend, with no limit for outside venues and gatherings of up to 200 allowed inside.

Vaccine passes and scanning would no longer be needed from April 4, and mandates would be scrapped for all except those in the health and aged care sectors, Corrections and at the border.

But Mair said the country was far from out of the woods, as shown by the number of daily covid-19 cases being reported — with 11 new deaths and 18,423 infections.

“It just seems crazy that the government are putting in place this strategy right now, at the worst time in regard to the high numbers of omicron within our community. It’s extremely dangerous,” Mair said.

Radio NZ News reports that Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said Māori had the highest rate of community cases of covid-19, overtaking Pacific people at 28 per 1000. Rates for NZ European and Asian ethic groups is 21 per 1000.

‘Where’s the Māori lens?’
“Where’s the Māori lens over this? Certainly, within our community there are hundreds [of cases] and there are a number in hospital.

“I just can’t understand a strategy where there hasn’t been any real analysis with substance in regard to the impact upon iwi, hapū and Māori, noting that we’re an extremely vulnerable community in the context of respiratory and asthma ailments.”

Mair said he understood some Māori leaders had been in discussion with the government and had made recommendations for the new strategy, but it appeared they had been ignored.

“I’ve been deeply concerned over the last couple of months where there doesn’t appear to be a strong Māori voice coming through or anything that might indicate that the government have a clear understanding of the ramifications of their decision around the covid strategy.

“This is a classic example — decisions being made right in the midst of cases going up, new variants around the corner, without understanding the impact and implications for Māori. I just think that’s a disgrace and shocking.”

Mair said he thought the strategy had been politicised, with Labour’s polling and political pressure the key factors.

“What motivates you to put in place an extremely dangerous strategy? You can only assume the motivation’s around political expediency and the impact upon economic wellbeing, without having the health lens driving your decision making.

Risk for vulnerable ignored
“The decisions by the prime minister and the government clearly have not taken into account the real vulnerability of Māori, and I think Māori, iwi and hapū have to be extremely careful in this precarious time.”

Yesterday, the prime minister said restrictions were being eased because it was safe to do so. Mair said this ignored the risk that remained for the vulnerable and sent the wrong message.

“I think because of the government’s strategy, people are saying things like: well, we’re going to get it anyway, it doesn’t matter, let’s get on with it and get back to normality as quickly as possible.

“The problem with those comments, of course, is the vulnerability of our Māori community, hapū and iwi is extremely high.

“I think our community in general is beginning to take a kind of defeatist approach and we should be, I think, extremely careful and vigilant in regard to dealing with this omicron.

“I have no doubt in my mind there’ll be more variants around the corner and we should always be prepared.”

Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air. Asia Pacific Report is a community partner.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has revealed cabinet’s decisions about when and how covid-19 restrictions will be eased.

She said the traffic light system would remain to help manage any future outbreaks.

However, Ardern said things had changed since the system was introduced:

• New Zealand is now dealing with the omicron variant, rather than delta;
• there is more more data available now and the government is better able to identify which environments are high risk; and
• there are high rates of vaccination coverage.

The changes came as the Ministry of Health reported today that the national death toll had risen above 200 — to a record 210 — with 11 further deaths, and 20,087 new community cases of covid-19.

• READ MORE: Covid-19 update: Total death toll rises above 200, with 20,087 new community cases reported today
• Other NZ covid outbreak reports

With that in mind, Ardern said she was announcing that all outdoor gathering limits would be removed from the traffic light system.

She said indoor gathering limits would increase from 100 to 200 under the red light setting.

Ardern said data showed hospitality had a relatively low secondary attack rate of 6.7 percent, which was backed up by other research.

She said it was the view of public health officials that hospitality gathering limits could be increased in the red setting from 100 to 200 without having a significant impact on the health system, particularly when retaining the seated and separated rules.

She also announced that vaccine passes would no longer be required from 11.59pm on April 4.

Watch the announcement

Video: RNZ New

Businesses and events would still be able to use them, if they chose to do so, but they would no longer be mandated, she said.

Ardern said masks were vital, and while people did not like them — for good reason — a study from the British Medical Journal late last year showed mask wearing reduced new cases by 53 percent.

In the orange setting, outdoor events will also be limitless. Close contact is higher risk for indoor events, however, so organisers of events over 500 people are encouraged to either add extra capacity or provide seating.

Green will not have restrictions but there will be guidance, and will not change.

“These changes are based on the best available evidence we have right now in real time. We believe they will make the Covid Protection Framework easier to maintain while also still being very effective,” Ardern said.

She said the changes could be made almost immediately and would come into effect at 11.59pm on March 25.

The next review of the traffic light settings and which setting the country sits in will happen on April 4.

Mandates needed for delta
On mandates and vaccine passes, Ardern said she was initially not in favour of their use but after months of delta it became clear that mandates were needed to achieve vaccination levels required for safe reopening, and passes had a role to play too.

She said these were undoubtedly one of the reasons the country reached 95 percent of the eligible population vaccinated, and achieved the near elimination of delta over summer, but omicron had changed things.

Almost all of New Zealand’s more than 500,000 cases of covid-19 had been in the omicron wave, she said. Many cases do not show symptoms and testing did not catch every case, so modellers expected total cases now could be as high as 1.7 million.

For the unvaccinated, the illness could be severe, she said.

Ardern said these people would have built some immunity from the illness itself, and as New Zealand had come down off the peak the need for passes changed.

The isolation period for household contacts remained at seven days, Ardern said.

On QR codes, she said there was no plan for New Zealand to contact trace more widely with the exception of high-risk environments like aged care facilities or residential facilities for the vulnerable.

QR codes use relaxed
From this weekend people would no longer be required to scan everywhere they went, and businesses were no longer required to provide the means to do so.

Ardern said businesses should stand ready to stand up QR codes again and people should not yet delete the app from their phone, in case of a new variant that evaded vaccines or was more deadly, in which case contact tracing would provide again a more critical role.

“Scanning has been a really important part of what we’ve achieved, so thank you for everyone for playing your part,” she said.

Finally, cabinet has also reviewed the role of vaccine mandates. As rates increased, they sought advice from Professor Sir David Skegg, who said the case for or against was now more finely balanced.

Skegg said: “Because of our relatively high vaccination coverage and increasing natural immunity as well as the apparent lowering of vaccine effectiveness of the omicron variant, while vaccination remains critically important in protecting New Zealanders from covid-19 we believe that several of the vaccine mandates could be dropped once the omicron peak has passed.”

The government will no longer require mandates for education, police and defence workforces and businesses operating vaccine passes from 11.59pm on April 4. They will continue to be used in health, aged care, corrections staff and border and MIQ workers.

Ardern said the government had also asked whether the mandates in the health sector could be narrowed, and expected to provide more updates on advice to the private sector on their use more broadly.

However, she asked people to still get vaccinated and boosted, saying it would continue to be central to the stability and strength of New Zealand’s recovery.

Looking back
Ardern said that after two long years of living in a pandemic it was easy to lose sight of how far New Zealand had come.

“This exact day two years ago, Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield announced from over at the Ministry of Health that we had 36 new cases of covid-19. Half at that time were from overseas travel, with the exception of the Queenstown World Hereford Cattle conference … we could contact trace 50 new cases a day back then. We hadn’t locked down yet, but the early signs were there.”

She said two new community cases were announced on 23 March 2020, one in Wairarapa with no link to the border.

Within days New Zealand was in a nationwide lockdown, a decision Ardern said was not a hard one.

“We had no other defence, no other way to protect each other. There was no vaccine, no antiviral medicines, there was very little data to tell us which public health restrictions worked and which did not, so we built our own defences and we hunkered down.”

The transition had not been easy but it had worked, she said. New Zealand successfully eliminated the first wave and recorded the lowest number of deaths in the OECD for two years in a row.

She said the response was also the best economic response, but while New Zealand had been successful “it was also bloody hard … everyone has had to give up something to make this work and some more than others”.

She said she imagined every family would have had a difficult conversation about vaccines, mandates or passes but among the different opinions there was also fatigue.

Ardern said New Zealand was now able to keep moving forward safely, but it had to be kept in mind that covid was here to stay.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Zealand’s Director-General of Health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, says covid-19 case numbers have passed their peak in Auckland, the country’s largest city, but that people should remain vigilant.

Dr Bloomfield said there were 20,907 new community cases of covid-19, a further 15 deaths and 1016 people in hospital in today.

He said the latest analysis showed covid-19 case numbers had passed their peak in Auckland, and were tracking down in all three district health boards.

• READ MORE: Covid-19 update: 20,907 new community cases, 15 deaths and 1016 people in hospital

Dr Bloomfield said that analysis also showed case numbers nationally — not including Auckland — were also slowing. They increased just 1 percent in the seven days to March 20, compared to a 44 percent increase in the week ending March 13.

The pattern did differ by DHB, with cases still increasing in the South Island, although there were encouraging signs they were peaking in the Midland region and in the Wellington region.

He said case numbers appeared to be largely now following the modelling for a high-transmission scenario. Case numbers were higher than the modelling suggested, and Dr Bloomfield said this may be because most cases in New Zealand were the BA.2 subvariant.

Hospitalisations in the northern region were also levelling off.

“We’re watching carefully and the expectation is that they will start to drop as the week progresses,” Dr Bloomfield said.

“The average length of stay for people on wards in the Auckland hospitals who have been discharged is now 3.2 days compared to just over two days last month, and the average stay in intensive care is five days.

“This increase in average length of stay reflects that we’re now seeing that people who are needing longer care, they may even be over their covid infection but they have symptoms that need to be managed, often from underlying conditions.”

Watch the update 

Dr Bloomfield said that even though cases in hospital in Auckland were staying high, the number of new admissions each day was dropping quickly. But because those being admitted now were sicker and required longer care in hospital, the total number of people in hospital remained fairly steady.

Emergency department admissions testing positive remain highest at Middlemore, but they had fallen from 40 percent last month to 28 percent now. Auckland Hospital was down from 30 percent to 22 percent, while Waitematā was steady about 18 percent.

Whangārei’s ED positivity rate was still increasing, he said.

“Admissions in the rest of the country are growing and we will continue to see them grow.”

Dr Bloomfield said hospitalisation rates during the delta outbreak was about 8 percent, whereas the omicron outbreak had been about 0.9 percent.

“That hospitalisation rate will appear to increase over coming weeks, because as the cases drop yet people remain in hospital we’ll see the denominator decline much quicker … hospitalisations will decline but more slowly,” he said.

“The number of deaths each day is also likely to increase and will take longer to decline.”

He said staffing shortages were a major pressure on the health system, and there was real pressure in hospitals as well as care in the community, including rest homes.

‘Covid isn’t done with the world just yet’
Dr Bloomfield said New Zealand could expect ongoing waves of covid, and looking across the Tasman was instructive.

“The number of people hospitalised with covid in New South Wales never dropped below 950 after their first omicron wave … it’s now back over 1000 as cases started to increase again.

“In contrast, in Victoria the number of hospitalisations declined down to around 200 and remained steady there … so two quite different pictures.”

He said this showed New Zealand should expect to see a residual number of cases and people in hospital.

The UK had seen increased case numbers with the BA.2 subvariant, with Scotland hit hardest.

“Case numbers there are just below their previous peak, and hospitalisation figures the highest they have been since 2020. Globally it’s likely there will continue to be further waves of omicron and likewise there will be new variants of concern.”

He said New Zealand would face these just as other countries would.

“Covid isn’t done with the world just yet.”

Looking ahead
Tomorrow the government is due to announce if it will relax mandates, vaccine passes and the traffic light system as the omicron outbreak passes its peak in Auckland. Cabinet discussed reducing the restrictions yesterday.

Ahead of the announcement, Dr Bloomfield said New Zealand was still in the middle of a global pandemic which had thrown curveballs before and would continue to.

“We need to be prepared to redeploy the measures that we already have in place or have used in the past.”

He said there was a balance between protecting the population — particularly vulnerable groups — and only using restrictions for the extent they were needed.

At the moment, total ICU and HDU beds were about 60 percent occupied, he said. Each day hospitals were looking at the number of beds available and staffing those accordingly.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Zealand’s Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield says it is clear that the number of cases in Auckland is on the way down, but in Wellington case rates are increasing rapidly.

Dr Bloomfield and Chief Science Advisor Dr Ian Town held a media briefing on the Omicron response today.

Dr Bloomfield said there were 21,616 new cases of covid-19 in the community and 960 people were in hospital, including 22 cases in ICU or high-dependency units with two more deaths.

• READ MORE:  Covid-19 update: Two more deaths, 21,616 new community cases and 960 people in hospital
• Declining NZ covid-19 case counts – but record deaths and more to come
• Other NZ covid outbreak reports

In the Northern region there were 559 people in hospital, with 40 percent — some 233 — aged 70 or over, he said.

Dr Bloomfield said the country saw higher case numbers compared to modelling from before the outbreak, but it was clear that the number of cases in Auckland is on the way down.

There were 6085 new cases in Auckland today, up from 4730 yesterday and 4509 on Sunday.

Dr Bloomfield says while admissions were on the way down, the total number of people in hospital with covid-19 was continuing to increase. Peak hospitalisations typically lagged behind peak case numbers by about a week.

Shift to subvariant BA.2
He said New Zealand had seen an interesting shift to the omicron BA.2 subvariant rather than the BA.1 variant. This could help explain why there were more transmissions than expected in the high-transmission scenario modelling.

However, this may be in New Zealand’s favour because other jurisdictions overseas — for example, NSW and the UK, particularly Scotland — were seeing second outbreaks with the BA.2 variant, having already had BA.1 variant outbreaks.

He said Scotland was seeing its highest case rate in nearly two years and had about 1800 people in hospital with the variant, compared to the under 1000 in New Zealand. Scotland has a population of 5.4 million, comparable to New Zealand’s 5 million.

Watch the update:

Video: RNZ News

Dr Bloomfield said it was important to make sure people were “vaxxed to the max”. He said this was a change in language — where the previously talked about term “fully vaccinated” was two doses, it was a shift to talking about being up to date with vaccinations.

He said it was clear that protection against getting omicron and/or being hospitalised wanes over time with just two doses.

A report from the Northern Region from March 8 showed just 16 percent of people admitted to hospital had their booster more than two weeks prior.

“So fully 84 percent of those people were not fully boosted … so even though only a small proportion of our population now has not had two vaccinations it is really really clear that a booster protects people from being hospitalised and we know it also helps protect people from dying from omicron.”

He said that in the same two weeks prior to March 8, just one person admitted to ICU was fully boosted.

Wellington outbreak
Dr Bloomfield noted there was now a “pretty full on outbreak” in Wellington, with case rates increasing rapidly.

But he thought the outbreak in Wellington, including the Hutt Valley and Kāpiti Coast, had yet to peak.

There were 1584 cases in the Capital and Coast DHB catchment and 33 hospitalisations.

“I think the rate of increase is similar to what we may have seen in Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty and others beforehand.’

Dr Bloomfield said the region with the highest case rate — per capita — right now was Tairāwhiti.

He said the DHBs (district health boards) had good plans in place, but when they had particularly high case numbers in hospital they did need to scale back some of their normal services.

He said some people were returning several negative RATs, but RATS were just “one tool” and not as accurate as PCR tests. He said people who had symptoms should assume they have covid-19.

Long covid
Dr Ian Town talked about long covid. He said most people who developed covid recovered completely, but the term “long covid” was generally applied to people who continued to suffer effects for at least 12 weeks.

It can include low energy, fatigue, shortness of breath and cough, headaches, low mood, difficulty concentrating, cognitive impairment, ongoing chest pains, a racing pulse, joint pains, aches and pains, weakness in muscle, ongoing changes to sense of taste or smell, and poor quality of sleep.

Dr Town said there was no suggestion the symptoms of long covid were psychological symptoms, and the key thing was to pace yourself and accept that more rest may be needed.

There was no specific treatment, but it was thought to be part of a post-viral immune response and the approach to long covid was “very much a framework of rehabilitation and pacing yourself and not overdoing it”.

“There isn’t a magic bullet in terms of the recovery.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Zealand’s Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield and Royal NZ College of General Practitioners president Dr Samantha Murton gave a briefing today on the government’s response to the omicron outbreak as hospital cases continue to climb.

The daily number of new community cases has dropped slightly today to 21,015 community cases, but the number of people in hospital with the coronavirus continues to rise, reaching 773.

There are now more people in hospital with covid-19 than at any other point over the past two years, the Ministry of Health said.

• READ MORE: Other NZ covid outbreak reports

There are 16 people in intensive care, with one new death reported today.

While the ministry initially said there were 845 people in hospital, it revised that number this afternoon to 773.

Today’s numbers are down compared to yesterday’s 22,454 and 742 hospitalisations, with a record 19 cases in ICU.

Speaking at today’s briefing, Dr Murton said 80 percent of GPs were now looking after more than 20 patients.

“It has put a huge amount of work on general practice. When you think about the fact that there are 20,000 people who have got covid every day and across the country 50,000 consultations normally happen every day, that’s a 50 percent increase in workload if we had to deal with every one of those 20,000 that came through,” she said.

‘Huge amount of work’
“It has put a huge amount of work on general practice. When you think about the fact that there are 20,000 people who have got covid every day and across the country 50,000 consultations normally happen every day, that’s a 50 percent increase in workload if we had to deal with every one of those 20,000 that came through,” she said.

“My colleagues want me to remind everyone that we are working really hard, doing our best for our patients and although we are prepared and have done the best we can do for when the outbreak occurred, it is still going to be a little bit messy for the next couple of weeks.”

Watch the media briefing

Video: RNZ News

She said that was because there were people who wanted care and then people who needed care and were “quite vulnerable”.

Those vulnerable people will be the ones GPs are focusing on, she said.

“The other thing we have found is that across the country, people are stressed.

“People are stressed about having covid, people are stressed about being isolated, about not being able to go out, about having family members who might be sick and the practices are under pressure to provide as much care as they can and so that stress can often end up with a lot of anxiety and peoples’ emotions might flare, to put it politely.

“My colleagues have suggested people be kind to their providers.

‘Have a bit of patience’
“Please have a bit of patience as patients.”

She also put out a reminder that booster vaccine shots were the best protection people could get.

Auckland hospitals have reported that they are dealing with far more covid-19 cases than even their worst case scenarios predicted, with daily case numbers as high as 533 across the city’s hospitals this week.

In Wellington, frontline care workers are operating around the clock to help the more than 17,000 people across the region who are isolating at home and in need of some level of assistance.

Canterbury District Health Board is already teetering on patient capacity, three weeks away from an expected peak of covid-19 cases.

Health Minister Chris Hipkins has announced that the isolation period for covid-19 cases and their household contacts is reducing to one week, down from 10 days, from tomorrow.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield says the national health system relies on New Zealanders’ continued cooperation as almost 20,000 cases are announced today.

Dr Bloomfield is resuming his appearance at daily 1pm media briefings amid the omicron outbreak, with peak cases and hospitalisations expected in the next few weeks.

He said today nearly 20,000 new cases of covid-19 had been reported, with 373 people in hospital, nine of whom are in ICU.

• READ MORE: Covid-19 update: Nearly 20,000 community cases, 373 in hospital, 9 in ICU
• Border controls: Tourists may be welcomed to NZ earlier, says Skegg
• Other NZ covid outbreak reports

He said it was hard to estimate how many people in hospital with covid-19 were there because of the virus, as opposed to simply having the virus and being there for a different reason.

However, he said Middlemore Hospital’s estimate of about 70 percent to 80 percent presenting because of covid-19 symptoms gives a good gauge.

There are just under 100,000 active cases across the motu, he said.

“I know that such a high daily case number can be concerning for people to hear, and many of us will now have whānau members who now have covid-19, but it’s important to remember that covid-19 now is a very different foe to what it was at the beginning of the pandemic.”

He said what had helped New Zealand so far had been doing the basics well and people should keep doing this — wearing masks, practising good hand hygiene, and avoiding going out if unwell.

“There’s no doubt the next few weeks are going to be tough, the health system can’t do it alone, so thanks in advance to all New Zealanders for continuing to support our efforts to live with the virus on our terms.”

Watch a replay of the briefing here:

The media conference today. Video: RNZ News

He said the high vaccination rate meant for most people omicron would be a milder illness and could be managed safely at home.

Dr Bloomfield says PCR testing had served New Zealand “incredibly well”, but with thousands of cases each day the country reached the point last week where rapid antigen testing became both useful and appropriate.

He said samples were typically pooled earlier on in the outbreak, but a positive test in a batch means each will need to be retested. Higher test positivity rates now, however, mean it becomes less feasible.

He said prior to February 7, none of the labs had ever exceeded 5 percent test positivity, but the swift increase in positive cases has affected that. Labs have also had other difficulties, including vacancies in roles and sickness because some lab workers had contracted the virus.

Apology over test result backlog
Dr Bloomfield said he wanted to apologise to people whose tests had been delayed, but said they had committed to completing the test processing.

People are still advised to seek a test, though some people facing a longer delay should also seek a rapid antigen test, he said.

The samples affected by the backlog might be slightly less accurate — they were more likely to show a negative result — but all positive results would be accurate.

Dr Bloomfield said some 9000 tests were sent to Queensland for testing, to help clear the backlog. He said the backlog was clearing, but anyone who had had a test on February 23 or earlier, or who had developed symptoms, should collect a rapid antigen test from their local testing centre or seek advice from Healthline.

He said the problem with delays in PCR testing was less to do with delays in rolling out rapid antigen tests, and more to do with the ministry being “a day or two late” to recognise how quickly the virus was spreading.

“Once the samples were in the lab it’s hard to take them out and redistribute them, so we still had capacity across the network but we didn’t have the opportunity to redistribute them and probably if we’d started to do that a day or two earlier, then we may still have had a backlog but perhaps not such a big one.”

Dr Bloomfield said test processing had got to a much more manageable level in the past 24 to 48 hours.

He said there was strong uptake of RATs for people who had symptoms, or who were household or close contacts, as well as surveillance testing at hospitals and aged care facilities.

If people needed to pick up a rapid antigen test, the Healthpoint website had an increasing list of places where they were available.

Dr Bloomfield said there were good numbers of the tests available now — more than five million had been distributed in the last seven days, there were over 12 million in storage, and more than 16 million were expected to arrive this week.

Self-reporting of test results
Bloomfield thanks the more than 40,000 people who have self-reported a rapid antigen test result. He says it is an important measure to give officials a good idea of how far the virus is spreading.

He says people who are unwell will be given enough tests for three tests per eligible person in their household. People who are critical workers can also preorder the tests online from testing centres.

During question time Dr Bloomfield said there was a bit of a lag on whole genome sequencing for those who have been in hospital, and with the short hospital stay times, there is not an accurate picture of how many cases in hospital are omicron versus delta.

The most common symptoms are cough, sore and scratchy throat, a runny nose, and generally feeling unwell, “that sort of flu-ey feeling, the whole body aches”, but people who are not boosted are far more likely to have more severe symptoms.

Dr Bloomfield said the loss of sense of smell and taste does not appear to be as much of a notable symptom for omicron, but some young people had also been experiencing an upset stomach.

The past two days have seen daily cases above the 14,000 mark, and hospitalisations have also continued to increase, reaching 344 yesterday.

It comes as the government yesterday confirmed New Zealanders would be able to return to New Zealand without isolating, with the date for returnees from countries other than Australia brought forward to Friday.

New Zealanders in Australia and critical workers were yesterday able to return without entering managed isolation.

People who are eligible but have not yet got their booster shot are urged to, as it protects against both transmission and severe illness from the omicron variant.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Zealand will move to phase 3 of the omicron response at 11.59pm tonight, Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins has confirmed.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield and Hipkins laid out what phase 3 includes.

While the ministry’s daily update of case numbers will come out later this afternoon, Hipkins confirmed today’s cases were “about 5000”. The actual figure was later confirmed as 6137 new cases and one death.

• READ MORE: Covid-19 update: 6137 new community cases in NZ today, one further death
• Covid-19 cases among anti-mandate protesters at Parliament

“This continued rise and also the number of hospitalisations we have which today sit at 205 means that we are now confirming our shift to phase 3 of our planned Omicron response. That’ll happen at 11.59pm tonight.”

He says most had been gearing up for this and it would not come as a surprise.

However, the move to phase three would not mean a “sudden lurch” in terms of additional restrictions or movements, because the traffic light system had been designed to smooth things out already.

“Our priorities now shift to isolating those with covid-19 and their household contacts to reduce the spread, while at the same time supporting supply chains and essential services to continue to operate.”

Only confirmed cases
Only confirmed cases and their household contacts – the people they lived with – would be required to isolate. All other contacts would be asked to monitor for symptoms but they would not have to isolate.

Hipkins said it was important to note that the legal requirement to isolate for cases and household contacts did not mean people who did not fit in those groups should not isolate.

“If you have a friend who has covid-19, you can make a judgment about whether you think you might be at risk … we are asking New Zealanders to accept a much greater degree of personal responsibility.”

Watch the announcement:

Today’s media briefing. Video: RNZ News

Dr Bloomfield said healthcare workforces who were essential and were household contacts were not allowed to go back to work for the first seven days but may return to work after that — three days early — if they returned a negative RAT on days five and six and were asymptomatic.

Hipkins said detailed information would be sent to schools but the principle remained the same — if you are not a household contact you are not required to isolate.

He said he acknowledged some parents were in a better situation than others.

Dr Bloomfield said people who did not respond to the text message would be followed up to confirm whether or not they needed clinical or social support to isolate.

RATs primary testing
Rapid antigen tests (RATs) will become the primary means of testing for covid-19, and will be available from thousands of sites. Millions more are expected to arrive over the coming days.

It is expected that businesses would be able to make the tests available to the public through retail outlets from March, he said.

Hipkins said RAT tests had been distributed throughout the health network.

“They’re available to people who need them … through the testing network,” he said.

“The last thing we want is people sitting on big stockpiles of them when there’s more demand elsewhere.”

Businesses have been able to import RATs since the beginning of December, but many “like ourselves, have had challenges in securing supplies because of global constraints”, Dr Bloomfield said.

He said clinics in Tāmaki Makaurau would begin rolling out supervised rapid antigen testing from today.

Testing locations
Locations where people can get a rapid antigen tests would be listed on the Healthpoint website.

He said there were 6.3 million unused tests in the country yesterday, another million arrived last night and another 10 million were expected to arrive in the coming week.

Hipkins said that because only household contacts were required to isolate, a self-assessment tool would help the government keep track of very high risk locations and the overall spread of the virus.

This included things like hospitals and aged care facilities.

Hospitalisations had become a major focus and daily case numbers would be a less important metric from now, Hipkins said.

“There’s no doubt the next few weeks are going to be pretty challenging… We just need to stick to the plan that we’ve set out as we manage a higher number of cases in our coming weeks before we reach a peak as other countries have,” he said.

Dr Bloomfield said hospitalisation rates were about 85 percent at the moment, which was “about what they usually are”, but an increase in cases would drive an increase.

Isolation plans needed
That said, “if you are unwell for any reason, you can and should seek care in our health system and that includes in our hospitals”.

Hipkins said omicron’s lower likelihood of severe illness, and high vaccination rates, were what allowed the self-management approach.

He suggested people should have an isolation plan, and talk to friends and whānau about how they would manage if they needed to isolate.

He also urged people to take up booster shots.

“You are far less likely to end up in hospital if you get covid-19 [and] if you’ve had a booster.”

He said modelling of the low-transmission scenario assumes high booster uptake.

Dr Bloomfield said two new studies confirmed the vaccine protected against getting infected in the first place and protected against severe illness.

“One of the studies, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed that compared with being unvaccinated the odds of contracting omicron after receiving three doses dropped by 67 percent — two thirds — and for delta the risk declined by a stunning 93 percent.”

“So a highly-boosted population here will serve us all well.”

Covid cases among protesters at Parliament
The Ministry of Health has reported there have been at least two positive covid-19 test results among the anti-mandate protesters in Wellington.

The ministry said the infected people had been told to self-isolate.

However, it would not say if the cases were among those who had been arrested in the past few days.

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said a team of staff working at the protest had caught covid-19 and while it had not been linked to protesters, it “stands to reason” the coronavirus was there.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Zealand is shortening the gap between second and third doses of the covid-19 vaccine from four months to three, the government has announced.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins and Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield made the announcement this afternoon.

Ardern said Cabinet made the decision on the advice of the Vaccine Technical Advisory Group, and it would mean a million more New Zealanders would be eligible for their booster shot.

• READ MORE:  The most challenging phase of the omicron outbreak is yet to come, but New Zealand may be better prepared than other countries
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• New Caledonian covid outbreak still climbing
• Over 600 cases in Kiribati as Health Minister says just ‘tip of the iceberg’

The shorter interval, which only applies to the Pfizer vaccine, will take effect on Friday,  February 4.

“It now means a total of 3,063,823 people aged 18 and over — two thirds of our population — will be eligible for their booster from this weekend. Over 1.3 million people have already got theirs,” Hipkins said.

The change would mean more people, especially Māori, would be able to receive a booster before omicron took hold, he said, urging anyone who was eligible to get their booster as soon as possible.

Ardern said an extra 100,000 Māori will be eligible for a booster, representing a 59 percent increase in Māori eligibility from Friday, while an additional 52,000 Pacific people will be eligible, representing a 47 percent increase.

Ardern said the reason for getting the booster was clear — Omicron was usually more mild, but it could be severe for some.

“So don’t think getting a booster is just about keeping yourself safe, it’s about ensuring our hospital and health system is not overwhelmed so those you love and everyone in our community who needs our hospitals can get the care they need,” she said.

Watch the government announcement:

Today’s media conference.Video: RNZ News

Hipkins said New Zealand was one of the top-10 most vaccinated countries in the OECD, and the earlier booster would also help reduce the impacts of omicron on workforces and supply chains.

“We have given ourselves a head start that we cannot afford to give up,” he said.

People can check their eligibility on MyCovidRecord, by referring to their vaccine appointment card, or calling 0800 28 29 26 between 8am and 8pm seven days a week.

Ardern said today that 94 percent of New Zealanders over the age of 12 were fully vaccinated.

“A year ago, achieving that level of community immunity would have been considered incredibly ambitious, but the overwhelming majority of the team of five million have done what they’ve done best this entire pandemic, banded together and turned out to get vaccinated not just for themselves but to keep their loved ones and communities safe.”

The high rates had helped stop a delta outbreak and given New Zealand a head start against omicron, but now the number boosted needed to get as high as possible, she said.

The government would create a big booster campaign during February, with details to be provided by the Ministry of Health next week, Ardern said.

Significant boost in funding
Dr Bloomfield acknowledged the work put in by vaccination teams across the country in achieving 94 percent vaccination. Māori vaccination rates were now up to 90 percent first dose and 85 percent second dose, he said.

Ardern said there had been a significant boost in funding for community organisations which was helping support the efforts to help vaccinate Māori around the country.

“What we’ve had to do is make sure that we’ve stood up a system that worked for delta, now we need to make sure that we are able to expand to deal with what will be a larger number of cases but actually the majority of cases won’t need the level of care that delta may have required. So that has been an ongoing programme of work with our Māori providers,” she said.

Dr Bloomfield said the impact of waning protection over time from the vaccine had been seen.

“The good news is that there is clear evidence with that booster dose of the Pfizer vaccine, that people’s protection goes back up to a similar level to what it was for delta with two doses, and that is well over 90 percent protection against hospitalisation or serious illness.”

He urged everyone to make a plan, and said there was excellent capacity for vaccinations across the system.

“While we can’t administer boosters to everyone in that one million this Friday, I can assure you we have excellent capacity across our system and we certainly have a good supply of vaccine.”

Important for vulnerable people
It was even more important for vulnerable people and those working in higher-risk settings to get the booster, and considerable work was under way to make boosters as available as possible to those people, Dr Bloomfield said.

New Zealand data so far was similar to that overseas — we had not seen an increase in side effects, and overall adverse events after each additional vaccination had declined, he said.

He had asked for advice on when 12 to 17-year-olds would be able to get booster doses.

Ardern said the reason behind the delay until Friday was the government needed to make sure all the infrastructure was stood up.

New Zealand was still relatively early on in its omicron outbreak compared to other countries, and there was still time for people to get their booster in the coming week and have the benefit of it before the variant spread widely, she said.

Dr Bloomfield said New Zealand was an early mover in reducing the booster interval from six months to four, and was moving to reduce the interval again to three months before the omicron outbreak, which was something many other countries did not have the opportunity to do.

Ministry of Health Chief Science Adviser Ian Town said bringing it forward to three months, which had been done in the UK and in many Australian states, meant New Zealand could get the level of antibodies at a peak before it was facing widespread transmission.

No downside
There did not appear to be any downside to reducing the interval to three months, he said.

Dr Bloomfield said he wanted to emphasise that the evidence was clear that while two doses was great for delta, that was not the case with omicron, “so we will be pushing really hard to vaccinate”.

There were 142 community cases of covid-19 and 54 border cases reported in New Zealand today. There were 38,332 booster doses given yesterday.

This morning, Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson defended the government’s approach to pregnant journalist Charlotte Bellis’ emergency MIQ requests, and its acquisition of rapid antigen tests (RATs) ahead of an expected rapid increase in Omicron variant cases across New Zealand.

National has been calling for borders to reopen immediately, and frequent RAT testing in schools.

Cabinet yesterday discussed its plans for reopening the borders, and Prime Minister Ardern is expected to make announcements about that tomorrow. A staged timeline was outlined late last year, but was quickly delayed because of the risks posed by omicron.

The government this morning announced it would adding $70.7 million to its Events Support Scheme, and extending coverage to events scheduled for before 31 January next year that were planned before being cancelled by the red traffic light setting.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

People should do everything they can against omicron, but it is likely large numbers will be infected, New Zealand’s Covid-19 Response Minister says.

Speaking to RNZ Morning Report today, Chris Hipkins said masks, booster shots, isolating and good preparation for isolation were all vital steps people should take to slow the spread of the virus.

But “the cat is out of the bag to some extent, and we know that we’re likely to see more cases, and potentially significantly more cases associated with these ones.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘Our main message is once you’re eligible come forward and get your booster dose’ – Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins (duration 7′:38″)
• READ MORE: Arrests during Samoa covid lockdown
• Up to half of NZ population could become infected with omicron – modeller
• Other NZ covid outbreak reports

“There’s no silver bullet we are going to experience a large number of cases.”

The entire country is now in the red Covid-19 Framework setting, with the news announced yesterday that omicron is likely spreading in the community.

“There are some unavoidable realities about this, and one of those unavoidable realities is that we will see omicron spreading much more quickly than previous variants of the virus,” Hipkins said.

Booster vaccinations were going strongly, he said, but there was still a chunk of those eligible who weren’t getting them as soon as they could.

“Our main message is once you’re eligible come forward and get your booster dose.”

Covid-19 vaccination providers have been warned to prepare for high demand today in response to the news of omicron spread in the community, and have been asked to consider staying open late to meet demand.

“We do know from our delta experience that when an outbreak is happening or is imminent, that drives a lot more [vaccinations].”

Making people eligible for the booster three months after their second Covid-19 shot, rather than the current four months would only shift about 100,000 people forward, Hipkins said, and while it had been considered, the benefit was not considered worthwhile at this stage.

Testing strategy shifts expected

Hipkins said it was expected that as the situation changed, the public will be asked to make changes in their response.

In this future this was likely to include whether those experiencing symptoms get tested.

Right now, Hipkins said, the government wanted everyone to continue to get tested if they had any cold or flu symptoms, or if they were a contact. But if daily case numbers rose considerably not everyone would be tested.

“A lot more people will get it, but many of those people — particularly those who’ve been boosted … are likely to be able to recover by staying at home,” he said.

“There will be some … further down the line … that we’ll be saying: ‘Don’t worry about getting tested … just stay home and get better’.”

National Party leader Christopher Luxon told Morning Report the 4.6 million rapid antigen test kits (RATs) currently in the country was an alarmingly low number and the government should have acted sooner to stockpile them and authorise private importing.

“We need them now, and we needed them months ago. Now we’re in a place where it’s quite an urgent situation,” Luxon said.

“Many countries … you actually upload the result of your rapid antigen test you do at home … and that’s how the government tracks what’s actually happening with cases.”

Hipkins said there were widespread international issues with RAT supplies; “Countries that are relying on them are now running out.”

But before Christmas the government had begun efforts to purchase as many as possible

“We know that as this situation unfolds we’re going to want to use rapid antigen testing a lot more.”

Luxon said the National party supported the government’s shift to the red framework setting “reluctantly”.

But he said the government must act more quickly at adopting international learning in how to respond to the virus: “We’ve got to keep going forward.”

He said once daily case numbers rose drastically, managed isolation and quarantine facilities (MIQ) at the border could become redundant. If that happens, National want the government to reconsider MIQ, and in particular to allow all New Zealanders overseas to return without having to go through it.

Mask use tutorials
Hipkins said experts strongly advised surgical masks were still the best for the public to use, and: “We’ve got plenty of those available.”

He said while testing showed N95 masks were more effective against Covid-19, in real world application it was not that simple.

“An N95 mask needs to be the right fit, otherwise it can be potentially less effective. If you buy the wrong shape or the wrong size and it doesn’t sit properly, then actually the extra protection that you could be getting from that – you won’t necessarily get that.”

The country has plenty of N95 masks for health workers and frontline workers in stock, and they were given professional fitting tutorials and had their fit checked by others.

Hipkins said the government would enact any new advice around masks and omicron quickly as it came in, but research on masks was still evolving.

Hipkins did not have any new updates on the Nelson Tasman region cluster of cases at this stage.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has confirmed that the whole of New Zealand will move into the red light covid-19 setting at midnight tonight in response to the covid-19 pandemic.

Nine covid-19 cases in Nelson yesterday have been confirmed as the omicron variant, Ardern said.

Another household member has since tested positive.

• READ MORE: Samoa announces covid lockdown from 6pm last night until 6pm on Monday
• Health workers prepare to support Omicron cases remotely
• Auckland City Mission Omicron plans in place

They are one family and recently attended a wedding and other events in Auckland and there is no clear link to the border.

Ardern said there were well over 100 people at these events.

The family was on the same flight as an Air New Zealand flight attendant who tested positive. All members of the family who were eligible have been double vaccinated, Ardern said.

“That means omicron is now circulating in Auckland and possibly the Nelson-Marlborough region, if not elsewhere,” Ardern said.

Focus on slowing the spread
Ardern said the focus is on slowing the spread of the omicron variant and the strategy includes rapid tests, contact tracing and isolating cases and contacts.

New Zealand’s system has “significant capacity” to work on stamping out outbreaks due to low case numbers, she said.

Watch the NZ government media briefing today. Video: RNZ News

“We know we will see far more cases than we have in the two years to date, but the difference to previous outbreaks is we are vaccinated and we are better prepared.”

Ardern encouraged New Zealanders to get their boosters saying it will help limit the spread and limit the likelihood of someone getting sick or needing to go to hospital.

She also encouraged parents and caregivers to seek out information about vaccines for their children.

Already, 20 percent of children aged 5-11 have been vaccinated or are booked to receive their vaccination.

Red light setting
Ardern reminded people the red light settings was not a lockdown.

She said it had restrictions, but business was still open, gathering numbers were reduced and differed depending on whether people were vaccinated or not.

Hospitality was seated and required a single server.

She said schools remained open, with mask wearing for everyone from year 4 upwards.

Ardern said school ventilation systems would be assessed.

Ardern encouraged households to have a “buddy” to help with food, for example, if someone in a household was unwell from covid-19.

The government had been preparing for three stages in its response to omicron, Ardern said.

Phase one includes the period up to 1000 cases a day or less. This is expected to take up to 14 days to arrive, and involves a “stamping-out approach”, she said. That includes contact tracing, isolation and testing anyone with symptoms at a community testing station or primary health provider. PCR tests will be used, but rapid antigen tests will also be rolled out to these providers.

In stage one people will need to isolate for 14 days if they are a case or a contact.

Stage two is a transition stage where the system is adjusted to identifying those at greater risk of omicron and where there is the greatest risk of severe illness from omicron.

When asked, Ardern said her wedding would not be going ahead under the red setting.

Ardern said New Zealand was not likely to enter stage three for a few weeks.

Stage three will involve changes to contact tracing. It will include the definition of contacts and isolation requirements and more details will be provided on Wednesday.

“It’s important to remember covid is a different foe to what it was at the beginning,” Ardern said.

Because of vaccinations, it would be a mild to moderate illness which could be managed at home, she said.

But she said the “team” still needed to do what it could to slow it down, as some people are immuno-compromised and more vulnerable to the virus.

When asked if cabinet had considered funding N95 masks, Ardern said there would be an assessment on mask advice to consider if there needed to be an update.

Risk of undetected omicron transmission ‘high’ – Bloomfield
Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said anyone with symptoms should get tested for Covid-19.

He said the risk of undetected transmission of the omicron variant in Auckland was considered high, because the Nelson family that had tested positive spent time at a wedding there.

New locations of interest will be listed on the Ministry of Health’s website.

There are five Air New Zealand flights that are locations of interest, which include the flights the infected family took, and the flights the flight attendant worked on.

• Flight NZ5083 from Auckland to Nelson at 5.20pm on 16 January
• NZ5080 Nelson to Auckland at 4pm on 19 January
• NZ5077 Auckland to Nelson at 2pm on 19 January
• NZ5049 Auckland to New Plymouth at 7.50pm on 19 January
• NZ5042 New Plymouth to Auckland at 1.50pm on 20 January

Contacts who have been at a location of interest were legally required to isolate and get tested as per Section 70, Dr Bloomfield said.

The risk of undetected transmission was judged as being high, as it was unclear how they became infected and they attended a wedding, he said.

As of 11pm last night, 150 of 192 people on the Air New Zealand flights had been contacted by health officials.

Attendees at the wedding have attended other venues with high numbers of people, including a funeral, an amusement park, the Sky Tower and domestic airports.

It is expected the number of cases and contacts will grow, Dr Bloomfield said.

Dr Bloomfield said people who needed medical care could receive it, and urged them to not put it off. Hospitals are at 84 percent occupancy, which was typical at this time of year, and ICU occupancy was under 70 percent.

Wage subsidy scheme for sick/isolating workers – Robertson
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Grant Robertson said the economic disruption from the omicron variant was expected to be more on the supply side of things — as seen overseas.

He said the initial focus was on those unable to be at work because they were infected or were a close contact isolating.

Support for these people included the Covid-19 Leave Support Scheme, which was paid at the same rate as the Wage Subsidy Scheme.

There would also be a scheme in place for people unable to work from home when waiting on covid-19 test results.

Robertson said New Zealand could afford the financial support the government was providing — and if anything, cannot afford to not provide it.

He said the country’s debt is lower than expected in part because of the wider covid-19 action taken in New Zealand.

Robertson said the scenario planning shows there could be 350,00 people self-isolating at once at the mid-point scenario planning, which would be with 25,000 cases.

Samoa announces 48-hour lockdown
In Samoa, RNZ Pacific reports that Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa had announced the country would be going into lockdown from last night at 6pm until 6pm on Monday evening.

Only essential services would be allowed but all offices and shops, including all public transport, would be closed. Churches were also closed.

“No vehicles will be allowed on the roads during his time and police will be monitoring,” she said.

The prime minister said the decision was to ensure proper measures were in place to avert community transmission.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Zealand’s first case of omicron has been identified, as the country hit its 90 percent full vaccination target today, children between five and 11 will be able to get the vaccine, and protesters marched on Parliament demanding an end to vaccine mandates and restrictions.

Here is how the day unfolded:

The first case of omicron was detected in New Zealand.

• READ MORE: Other NZ covid outbreak reports

A person who was double-vaccinated tested positive for the virus on Sunday after arriving in the country from Germany in Auckland via Dubai.

They have now been moved to the quarantine facility at the Sudima Hotel in Christchurch.

The person will spend a full 14 days in quarantine — and all those on the same flights and hotel floor will have to remain in their hotel for 10 days.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield is not ruling out using localised lockdowns if the omicron variant slips into the community.

University of Otago epidemiologist Michael Baker said even one case of omicron in the community should be enough to prompt a localised lockdown.

Vaccination milestone
The country has hit its 90 percent full vaccination target against covid-19.

The official count came through overnight, meaning nearly 3.8 million people have had two vaccine doses.

Seven of the country’s 20 district health boards (DHBs) have reached the 90 percent mark for second doses, including all three in Auckland.

And 94 percent of the eligible population nationwide have had their first dose.

Meanwhile, Medsafe has granted provisional approval for the Pfizer covid-19 vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 years old.

Cabinet will now consider advice from officials and the Health Ministry before deciding when and how to roll out the vaccine across the country.

If approved, the programme is expected to start next month.

The two-dose vaccine is an adapted version of the adult version.

The ministry said work was well underway to ensure a safe and efficient rollout.

Protesting vaccine mandates and restrictions
About 3000 people marched from Civic Square to Parliament today to demand an end to the covid-19 vaccination mandates and traffic light restrictions.

The protest — organised by Destiny Church leader Brian Tamaki’s Freedom and Rights Coalition — took place the day after Parliament rose for the year.

Police had to close off Willis Street and part of Lambton Quay.

Metlink services which led to the Lambton Quay Interchange were diverted while the protest was underway.

Protesters held a banner reading “Labour Must Go”.

Parliamentary Security fenced off the forecourt to prevent any protesters entering the Parliament building, and staff were warned to stay away from the windows.

About 50 police officers stood on the forecourt.

The numbers

• There were 91 new cases of covid-19 in the community today.
• Two are in Northland, seven are in Waikato/King Country, 10 in Bay of Plenty, one in Rotorua, 16 in Taranaki and the remaining cases in Auckland.
• The new cases in Northland are in Ruakākā.
• In Taranaki, the new cases are in Eltham, but all but one of them were reported yesterday.
• Fifty eight people are in hospital, with four in either ICU or a high dependency unit.
• A wastewater sample collected from Gisborne on Tuesday detected the virus.
• This is the sixth positive wastewater result for Tairāwhiti in recent weeks, indicating there may be unknown cases in the community.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Zealand’s most restrictive border controls will be eased early next year, the government announced today.

Most fully-vaccinated travellers into New Zealand would not be required to go through managed isolation from early next year, Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said.

A seven-day self-isolation requirement will take the place of MIQ.

• READ MORE: Other NZ covid lockdown reports

Hipkins revealed fully-vaccinated New Zealanders would be able to travel from Australia without having to quarantine from 11.59pm on 16 January, and from 11.59pm on 13 February that would extend to fully-vaccinated New Zealanders from all countries.

From April 30, all fully-vaccinated foreigner travellers would also be able to come to this country without having to quarantine, though proof of vaccination would be required.

All travellers not required to go into MIQ would still require:

• a negative pre-departure test proof of being fully vaccinated;
• a passenger declaration about travel history, a day 0/1 test on arrival;
• a requirement to self-isolate for seven days, and
• a final negative test before entering the community.

Government ‘still cautious’
Hipkins said: “It’s very encouraging that we as a country are now in a position to move towards greater normality. I do want to emphasise though that travel in 2022 won’t necessarily be exactly the same as it was in pre-2020 travel.”

The government defended its decision not to open the trans-Tasman bubble before Christmas.

Hipkins said the government needed to remain cautious about how much risk the country was exposed to in a short period of time.

He said loosening restrictions domestically and at the border need to be staggered.

215 new covid-19 cases
There were 215 new community cases of covid-19 today — 181 in Auckland, 18 in Waikato, three in Northland and 12 in the Bay of Plenty.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield this afternoon said 87 people were being treated in hospital, eight people of those in intensive care.

The Ministry of Health said 118 of today’s 215 new cases were yet to be linked.

There were 18,880 vaccine doses given yesterday — 6496 first doses and 12,384 second doses, meaning 92 percent of eligible people in New Zealand have had their first dose and 84 percent are now fully vaccinated.

Traffic-light system legislation
Legislation setting up the traffic light system — including mandating vaccinations for some workforces — has been pushed through Parliament in less than 24 hours.

Passed under urgency, the bill was opposed by the opposition National, Act and Te Paati Māori parties.

National called it secretive, divisive and unduly rushed. Act said the government had plenty of time to move it through the regular process involving greater scrutiny, and the Māori Party called it a “cruel law change” that would victimise vulnerable communities.

MPs also rejected a change to the traffic light system, which would have seen places of worship and funerals exempt from vaccine certificate requirements.

National’s Simeon Brown had put forward a proposed change to the bill.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Some Aucklanders enjoying new freedoms today said there had been stress and anxiety in the community during New Zealand’s longest lockdown.

The country’s largest city moved to level 3 step 2 and shops can open — but swimming pools, cinemas and theatres remain closed.

Coincidentally, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern visited Auckland for the first time in 12 weeks touring a factory and visiting a Pacific vaccination drive.

• LISTEN: RNZ Checkpoint – Education Minister details return to schools (duration 8′:53″)
• READ MORE: Other NZ covid lockdown reports

She faced criticism for not meeting with other businesses such as hospitality or hairdressers.

Ardern said she would be returning to Auckland to see how the people were dealing with the delta outbreak.

This morning she spoke with Employers and Manufacturers Association chief executive Brett O’Riley and toured an engineering factory, before visiting a Pacific youth vaccination event in Māngere. It is her first trip to the city since lockdown was imposed in August.

In the stand-up, Ardern said the reason she was delayed in visiting Auckland was limitations in Parliament.

“As soon as those measures lifted, I found the first available time to come home,” she said.

“Tāmaki Makaurau is my home and today’s been really important for me to reconnect with those I’ve been keeping in contact with at a distance — business representatives, health providers — but also to have a chance to talk to Aucklanders about their experience.”

Schools to reopen
Covid-19 Response and Education Minister Chris Hipkins said the benefits of reopening primary schools and kura in Auckland and Waikato on November 17 far outweighed any risks.

Children in Year 4 and up will need to wear a mask, the number on-site will be limited, and groups of children will have to distance themselves from one another.

Schools and kura will decide what works best for them, but most pupils in Years 1 to 8 will probably return part-time, while Years 9 and 10 go back full-time.

The opposition National Party wants all schools to reopen immediately, and said paying schools up to $400 per student and regularly testing children would help them make up for lost class time.

The party this morning released its “Back on Track” plan to help school students catch up on their curriculum.

The numbers

• 147 new community cases of covid-19: 131 in Auckland, 14 in Waikato, and two in Northland. And 63 cases from today remain unliked.
• The suburbs of interest in Auckland are Ranui, Sunnyvale, Kelston, Birkdale, Manurewa and Māngere.
• 81 people with Covid-19 in hospital, including 11 in ICU or HDU. Of those, 40 cases are either unvaccinated or not eligible, 25 are partially vaccinated, 10 are fully vaccinated, and the vaccination status of six is unknown.
• 4813 community cases in the current outbreak.

A man in his 60s who had covid-19 and was isolating at a home in Glen Eden in Auckland has died — the third such death.

The cause of his death will be determined by the coroner, including whether it may have been covid-related.

Two people isolating at home with covid-19 died last week.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said allowing covid-19 patients to isolate at home was generally working well but the deaths were being reviewed.

AstraZeneca vaccine becomes an option
The AstraZeneca vaccine will be made available later this month for a small number of people aged 18 and over who cannot have the Pfizer shots for medical reasons.

Dr Bloomfield said people who were required to be vaccinated under the public health order, but who preferred AstraZeneca to Pfizer, could also opt for it.

He said only a few hundred people aged 18 and over would be eligible for the AstraZeneca vaccine from late November.

However, several hours later, Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins told Newstalk ZB AstraZeneca would actually be available to anyone who has a conversation with their doctor.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern did not turn up to a planned New Zealand media event at a vaccination clinic in Whanganui today where a group of anti-vaccination protesters gathered.

Ardern was visiting a vaccination bus in the city and changed the time of the stand-up to just after 1.20pm at a new venue.

Around 200 anti-vaccination protesters made their presence felt at the mobile clinic on Victoria Avenue.

• READ MORE: PM Jacinda Ardern moves covid media conference after conspiracy heckling
• Other NZ covid reports

But this did not put off a few people from getting their shots or turning up hoping to catch a glimpse of Ardern.

In the stand-up, Ardern said she was not taking the protest personally and was not surprised by it.

Whanganui’s vaccination rates are below the national vaccination average.

In other developments today:

• The Ministry of Health announced 100 new community covid-19 cases — 97 in Auckland and three in Waikato.
• The government has purchased another 4.7 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for use in New Zealand over the next year, Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins revealed while giving the latest details on the pandemic with Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield.

Second day in row
This was the second day in a row that an Ardern covid media briefing had been disrupted by protest over covid vaccination. Yesterday, heckling in Northland by an American pharmacist claiming to be a journalist forced the prime minister to change venues in the middle of the press conference.

“We are at a stage in the vaccine roll-out where we are trying to reach into communities that may hold firm views,” Ardern said today.

“But we need to have those conversations and, just talking to some of our health practitioners, their goal is to talk to everyone wherever they can to have those conversations about why it’s so important that people are vaccinated.”

On teachers who may be about to lose their jobs due to the government vaccination mandate, Ardern said: “We have not taken lightly the decision for some areas to require vaccination. It’s taken a lot of discussion and careful thought and we have focused in on those groups that we consider high risk.”

On whether mandates have destroyed social cohesion and forced some into corners, Ardern said although it may have had that effect with some, for others it had forced a conversation and made people ask questions.

“We had the experience of having already rolled this out for our border workers and what we noticed was by putting a date it did cause those who had questions to go and seek advice, talk to trusted health professionals and then make a decision.”

On her statement at the beginning of the pandemic that vaccinations would never be forced on anyone, yet mandates seemed to contradict that, Ardern said it was always her view that the government would not force all New Zealanders to be vaccinated and that view had not changed. They would not.

‘Duty of care to the vulnerable’
“This is about certain workforces and work places, where we’ve applied assessment on whether or not we have a duty of care to look after those most vulnerable.”

“We’ve guarded against requiring vaccines where we need to ensure that people are always, no matter what, they are able to access health services, food, government support.

“We have been very clear, we will not require nor will we ever require vaccine certificates to access food, government benefits, access services that people need to live.”

Vaccination efforts across the country are in fully swing as district health boards work towards 90 percent full vaccination rates.

Only five district health boards have hit the milestone for first jabs: Capital and Coast, Auckland, Waitematā, Canterbury, and, just yesterday, Southern DHB.

Counties Manukau District Health Board is on the home stretch to meeting the 90 percent first dose milestone, only 3951 injections away.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Zealand’s cabinet has decided to ease restrictions for some, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says cases may peak this month at 200 a day, and Tonga will enter a snap lockdown at midnight.

Restrictions are set to ease slightly in both Waikato and Tāmaki Makaurau, albeit at different times.

Prime Minister Ardern announced at today’s post-cabinet briefing that Waikato would move down to alert level 3 step 2 from midnight Tuesday.

• READ MORE: 162 new community cases in New Zealand today
• Other NZ covid lockdown reports

In Auckland, fewer than 5000 first doses remain before reaching 90 percent single-dose vaccination, and for Auckland as a whole 80 percent has had two doses.

“And that’s incredible,” said Ardern, praising Aucklanders for their progress.

“Case numbers, while growing, remain within some of our expectations as modelled and the public health assessment of the impact of changes like opening up retail include that this activity is generally not responsible for marked increases of new cases.”

Meanwhile, cabinet has decided in principle to move Tāmaki Makaurau to alert level 3 step 2 next Tuesday at 11.59pm.

Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said potentially slightly easing restrictions in Auckland was a pragmatic move.

Hipkins told RNZ Checkpoint tonight the in-principle decision was based on public health advice.

Covid-19 modeller Professor Michael Plank earlier warned that relaxing restrictions in Auckland and parts of Waikato would accelerate case numbers.

The numbers

• There were 162 new community cases reported today
• Of the new cases 156 are in Auckland, five in Waikato and one in Northland
• There are 53 people in hospital
• More than 3.1 million New Zealanders are now fully vaccinated
• More than 20,000 vaccines were administered yesterday

Covid-19 cases may peak this month at 200 a day according to modelling that takes vaccination rates into account, Ardern said.

The government modelling suggested there could be 1400 covid-19 cases reported a week by the end of the month.

This would result in 150 new hospitalisations a week, with 11 of those patients requiring intensive care.

The modelling was based on a median scenario with a transmission rate of between 1.2 and 1.3.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said ICUs would not be overwhelmed with those numbers.

Tonga goes into lockdown
Two days ago the kingdom of Tonga recorded its first case of covid-19, now at midnight the main island Tongatapu will go into lockdown.

The lockdown will stay in place until next Sunday.

The positive case arrived in Nuku’alofa on a repatriation flight from Christchurch and while he is asymptomatic, he is being cared for alone in a special quarantine facility in Mu’a.

Tonga’s Ministry of Health Chief Executive Dr Siale Akau’ola said the remaining 214 passengers were in MIQ at the Tanoa Hotel while about 80 frontline workers who met the flight are also in MIQ at the Kupesi Hotel.

“In terms of gatherings this is the most significant part of the lockdown. No schools, all schools are closed, no church gathering, no kava club, no entertainment or any kind of gathering,” RNZ Pacific’s correspondent in Tonga, Kalafi Moala, said.

Safety fears as supplement sales soar
Sales of natural health supplements have risen since covid-19 arrived in New Zealand, but some products can have adverse effects such as anaphylaxis or death.

Supplements, however, are largely unregulated in New Zealand, with the Ministry of Health saying the pandemic has delayed new legislation.

Ten years of Medsafe data shows two people died from complementary and alternative medicine, or CAM, and that 30 percent of suspected reactions are life-threatening or cause disability.

About eighty percent of New Zealanders have taken natural health supplements, and Nielsen data shows sales in supermarkets alone rose by nearly 14 percent in the past two years, reflecting worldwide trends.

Two positive community cases fled the Jet Park Managed Quarantine Facility yesterday, in a second breach of MIQ security at the weekend.

Police said one of the people has been found and returned to MIQ. He was found during a vehicle stop in west Auckland.

The whereabouts of a woman who also skipped MIQ on Saturday is known to police but public health officials said she did not need to return.

Police said a decision around any charges would be made soon.

Meanwhile, police said a 36-year-old man had been arrested and charged with Failing to Comply with Order (Covid-19) in relation to attending a gathering at the Auckland Domain and subsequent march through Newmarket on Saturday.

Ronapreve covid-19 treatment
A covid-19 treatment the government is purchasing can help reduce the number of people dying from the virus, says an expert from the University of Otago.

Pharmac revealed yesterday it is set to subsidise Ronapreve, also known as Regeneron or REGEN-COV, which is used for people in danger of becoming severely unwell.

It is expected to be in the country by Christmas.

University of Otago infectious diseases professor Kurt Krause told RNZ Morning Report it was a highly effective way of dealing with early infection and in preventing infection.

Medsafe is also considering molnupiravir for the treatment of covid-19.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The New Zealand government revealed changes to MIQ (managed isolation and quarantine) today, with stays halving from 14 to seven days, followed by isolation at home for three days.

Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins and Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield gave today’s update on the government’s response to the Delta outbreak.

There were 89 new community cases of covid-19 reported in New Zealand today — including two in Christchurch.

Watch it here

Today’s media briefing. Video: RNZ

Under the new MIQ regime, which will begin from November 14, arrivals must be fully vaccinated and will be tested on days 0, 3 and 6 and undertake a rapid antigen test before leaving MIQ, before a day-9 test at home.

He said this would free up about 1500 rooms a month in MIQ. Some of this would be taken up by community cases but some would go into the booking system for travellers from overseas.

Pacific border travel
The second step will be to reopen the border to low-risk travellers from Samoa, Tonga and Tokelau without isolation.

This one-way quarantine-free travel will begin from November 8.

The third step will allow more people to isolate at home, available to increasing numbers of travellers in the first quarter of 2022.

He said changes at the border will be linked to the traffic light system.

“The faster New Zealanders get fully vaccinated so that we can move to the traffic light system, the faster we’ll be able to open the border.”

He said New Zealanders will also understand that the government does not want to accelerate the spread of covid-19 around the country by lowering restrictions before we reach very high levels of vaccination.

Kiwis first priority
Hipkins said the first priority for allowing people into New Zealand was Kiwis and people who already had visas, followed by other groups like international students.

“Tourists are more of a challenge … what you will see though in the first part of next year will be quite different from the way we’ve been managing it over the past 18 months.”

Hipkins said stopping covid-19 at the border had been a priority and New Zealand’s ability to do so had led to levels of freedom over the past year and a half which were the envy of many other nations.

“As a country we owe a massive vote of thanks to our front-line MIQ and border workers,” he said.

Hipkins said in the meantime, the message to all New Zealanders was very simple – get vaccinated.

83 cases in Auckland
The Ministry of Health said 83 of the new community covid-19 cases were in Auckland and four are in Waikato.

Two were already reported in Christchurch yesterday, but the Hipkins said this afternoon that Cabinet had decided to keep the region at alert level 2.

Dr Bloomfield said there was one case in an MIQ worker, with work being done to identify if this was a community case.

Fifty of today’s cases remain unlinked. There are 293 unlinked cases from the past 14 days.

There are also seven cases in managed isolation

There are 37 people in hospital, with five in intensive care.

The four new community cases in Waikato today include three in Hamilton and one in Ôtorohanga, and are all contacts of existing cases.

Just three cases in the Waikato have not been epidemiologically linked to the outbreak, although they have been geneologically linked.

Yesterday there were 74 new community cases of covid-19 — 68 in Auckland and six in Waikato.

There have now been 2921 cases in the current delta outbreak.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Pacific leaders say offering “visas for vaccinations’ would be the ultimate incentive for New Zealand overstayers to get the covid-19 jab, as Auckland struggles to stop delta variant infections spreading through the community.

It comes as epidemiologists say the government needs to pull out all the stops to get people vaccinated amid rising case numbers.

Immigration lawyer Richard Small of Pacific Legal today called for visas only to be granted to those who get inoculated, and an amnesty to overstayers who are double-jabbed.

• READ MORE: Covid-19 briefing: ‘We are finding most of the cases out there’ – Bloomfield
• Other NZ covid lockdown reports

The Ministry of Health reported a record 102 community cases today, the first time the number of new cases has reached triple figures.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said on the current trajectory there could be up to 180 cases a day within two to three weeks. The number of these cases that ended up in hospital would depend on how many had been vaccinated, he said.

The latest modelling showed there was not a large amount of undetected cases, and the numbers being found were what would be expected, he said.

Plea for an overstayer amnesty
The Pacific Leadership Forum is calling for an overstayer amnesty through a parliamentary petition, which won support from the Employers and Manufacturers Association.

The forum’s Pacific Response Coordination Team chair Pakilau Manase Lua said that adding in an immigration incentive to that amnesty would be very effective.

“I would guarantee that probably 99.9 per cent of overstayers would come out of the woodwork and get vaccinated if that was their pathway to residency or amnesty to get their papers to be legal here,” Lua said.

“They’re desperate. It was hard enough before covid arrived for these people to survive – they have to work, they have to find a way to make ends meet.

“Moving from house to house and at the whim of the family and friends who are sheltering them. And that’s a risk to themselves and to others if they’re not vaccinated”

Among an estimated 14,000 overstayers, the highest numbers without valid visas are from Tonga and Samoa.

A fifth of the current active covid-19 cases are among Pacific people, and their fully vaccinated rates are lower (at 59 percent) than the national average (67 percent).

‘They fear authority’
If the government was concerned an amnesty would be unpopular, it needed to make sure politics did not trump public health, said Lua.

“The optics don’t matter, it’s life or death – in a pandemic, what are optics compared to human lives? We’ve got a virus raging in South Auckland among our communities where most overstayers are living.

“And despite all the reassurances to go out and test and to get vaccinated, we know that many have yet to be vaccinated – some have gone in, but the majority have not.

“Rightfully, they fear authority – these are people who are hiding from authority because they’ve got deportation orders or other things that are hanging over them.”

Tongan Manase Lua, an overstayer as a child during the Dawn Raids era before an amnesty gave his family a permanent future, said launching a similar reprieve now would also recognise the reality that no-one could be deported back to the Pacific Islands while there was a risk of them spreading covid-19 there.

It was mind-boggling that the government was disregarding the risk, as well the contribution overstayers make, he said.

“They’re resourceful, they work hard, they often do the work that nobody else wants to do on the front lines — while we’re working from home and in the safety and security of home, they’re out on the front lines picking fruit, cleaning the floors, mopping the hospital floors and all the hard work that we take for granted.

“So they would love this opportunity to be a person, be a human being in the country that says it’s kind.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Zealand today reported a drop by a third in the number of new community cases of covid-19 to 60 after a record high yesterday.

The Ministry of Health said 56 of today’s cases were in Auckland and four were in Waikato.

Yesterday the ministry reported 94 new community cases — the highest number since the pandemic began.

• READ MORE: Man charged and taken into custody over breaching level 3 rules at Auckland event

There were also two cases reported at the border today.

Authorities also reported that three positive covid-19 cases staying at an Auckland managed isolation facility allegedly escaped last night.

There were two separate escapes involving the three people who were staying at the Holiday Inn Auckland Airport managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facility in Māngere, South Auckland.

Two were caught five minutes later.

The other involved a woman with covid-19 who has since handed herself in to the police after fleeing quarantine in Auckland last night.

Police said she was being taken to a custody unit before appearing in Manukau District Court tomorrow on a charge of failing to comply with a health order.

She was allegedly on her way from hospital to a quarantine facility and had stopped to collect belongings from home, when she fled.

Twenty-two of today’s 60 cases are yet to be linked to earlier cases. There are 166 unlinked cases from the past 14 days.

43 people in hospital
There are 43 people in hospital, including five in intensive care.

The number of community cases connected to the current outbreak is now 2158 and there have now been 4854 cases in this country since the pandemic began.

In announcing today’s new covid-19 case numbers, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said infections were still expected to rise and daily numbers would bounce around.

He continued to encourage New Zealanders to get tested for the virus.

“Of the four new cases today in Waikato, two of those are close household contacts who were already in a quarantine facility and the other two were also known to have likely links to existing cases.”

The total number of cases in Waikato was now 56, 10 of whom have now recovered.

Dr Bloomfield again urged people in Waikato to get tested

“Yesterday, New Lynn’s Shadbolt Park was classified as a location of interest. It’s now been reclassified as an exposure event and has been taken down from the Ministry of Health website.

“Having looked further into the event, which was being managed by a PHU elsewhere in the country it is now being assessed as an exposure event with a small number of people who are contacts.

“They are all known, have all been contacted and are now isolating.”

42,809 vaccine doses given
There were 42,809 vaccine doses given yesterday — 10,392 first doses and 32,417 second doses.

He said health teams in Auckland had moved away from using suburbs of interest as part of their testing regime because the infections are widespread across the city.

Testing instead was going to be focused in areas where there was a higher test-positivity rate, where the risk of unidentified cases is considered potentially higher.

“People with symptoms and even if they are mild symptoms, even if you are vaccinated in New Lynn and the North Shore suburbs of Rosedale, Redvale and Bayswater please do go and get tested as soon as possible,” Dr Bloomfield said.

He said it was important to determine whether there were undetected cases in those communities.

Dr Bloomfield also said from Thursday healthcare employees working into quarantine and isolation facilities would be allowed to work in other healthcare facilities without the need for a 48-hour stand-down period and negative test requirement.

“This will allow greater flexibility in using that MIQ workforce and of others being able to supplement that workforce and reduce some of the real pressure that is under that workforce,” he said.

Third dose for some
He said information was going up on the Health Ministry’s website soon relating to the third dose of the Pzifer vaccine for immuno-compromised people.

It would include the inclusion criteria, including how this small group of people would be identified and when they would receive their third vaccination.

“You will not be able to book a third vaccine on the Book My Vaccine website … details will be up on the website later this afternoon,” he said.

Destiny Church leader Brian Tamaki has pleaded not guilty to breaching bail and lockdown rules governing mass gatherings.

It is Tamaki’s second court appearance in relation to mass gatherings.

He was granted bail by Judge Josephine Bouchier to appear before the Auckland District Court next year.

Police have also laid charges against four people in relation to organising and attending mass gatherings in the upper North Island on October 16.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Zealand’s Associate Health Minister Peeni Henare today thanked all Māori providers, iwi, hapū, practitioners, vaccinators and district health board (DHB) staff for their efforts, and warned that “covid-19 is on the doorstep of your houses”.

“Do not let it enter,” he added.

“You’re efforts are indeed seen,” he said as he fronted a media briefing today with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield.

• READ MORE:  Māori leaders opposed to rumoured covid-19 traffic light system
• Other NZ covid lockdown reports

Henare said that over the past two weeks, prior to Super Saturday, he had travelled to a number of DHBs and saw great work but identified a number of challenges.

He asked those who were not on board for their help.

“Our whānau need you and to many of them you are the trusted person that will be key to them making an informed decision about the vaccination,” he said.

Significant funding had already been provided to Hauora Māori to support and build capability for the vaccine programme, he says.

He said that if they needed support to make their decision, get their information from official sources or they could speak to kaumātua and kuia who were currently leading vaccination rates among Māori communities.

An announcement would be made later in the week regarding support for the Māori vaccination effort.

“We’ve seen the threat that this current covid-19 outbreak is to the wellbeing of Māori communities with a total of 560 Māori cases recorded.

Watch the covid-19 update

Covid-19 update: Video RNZ News

“In the last two weeks, Māori have made up 45.7 percent of total cases vs 28 percent throughout the entire outbreak. Although sobering, these numbers reinforce why vaccinating our communities is so important,” he said.

“So I say to the Māori people, covid-19 is on the doorstep of your houses, do not let it enter and the best course of protection still remains for us to vaccinate our people.”

94 community cases
New community cases of covid-19 jumped to 94 today — the highest total in the current outbreak, the Ministry of Health reports.

Of today’s cases as at 10am, 41 are linked — 26 of which are household contacts — and 53 are unlinked, the ministry said in a statement.

There are 38 people in hospital – eight in the North Shore, 12 in Middlemore, and 18 in Auckland.

Five people are in ICU or HDU.

The total number of cases in the outbreak is 2099. That is made of 2030 cases in Auckland (1360 of whom have recovered); 52 in Waikato (seven of whom have recovered); and 17 in Wellington (all of whom have recovered).

And 183 cases from the past 14 days remain unlinked.

The ministry said there were 2039 contacts.

A total of 16,921 tests were processed around the country yesterday, 12,688 being in Auckland.

As of this morning, there were 439 locations of interest.

Vaccination numbers
In terms of vaccination numbers to date, 6,387,870 vaccines have been administered: 3,582,822 (85 percent) first doses, and 2,805,048 (67 percent) second doses.

Of those, 379,563 (66 percent) Māori have had their first dose and 258,018 (45 percent) have had their second dose.

And 231,295 (81 percent) Pasifika have had one dose of the vaccine while 171,818 (60 percent) are fully vaccinated.

In Auckland, 89 percent of the eligible population has had one dose of the vaccine and 72 percent has had both doses.

Yesterday the ministry reported 60 cases of the virus, three in Waikato and the rest in Auckland.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern yesterday announced Northland would move to alert level 2 at 11.59pm tonight.

Waikato remains in level 3, with a review of the setting on Friday and Auckland will remain in level 3, step 1, for at least two more weeks.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The number of covid-19 vaccinations given out during New Zealand’s Super Saturday event yesterday has just ticked over the 130,000 mark.

In a statement this afternoon – in which it was confirmed there were 51 new community cases today – the Health Ministry said a total of 130,002 doses were given out across the country yesterday.

They included 39,025 first doses and 90,977 second doses.

• READ MORE: Other NZ covid lockdown reports

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said the record-breaking numbers provided a “huge boost” to New Zealand’s fight against the coronavirus.

“People across the motu embraced Super Saturday like their communities’ lives depended on it. It was inspiring to witness as we know the Covid-19 vaccine is key to our efforts to control the virus,” he said.

Dr Bloomfield said Auckland did “incredibly well” with 41,081 people vaccinated there yesterday, including 9,039 first doses and 32,042 second doses.

“They’ve hit 89 percent of their eligible population who have had their first dose and are tantalisingly close to reaching 90 percent,” he said.

‘Get vaccinated asap’ plea
“I continue to urge everyone in Auckland who hasn’t received their first vaccination to get vaccinated as soon as possible. And remember, we’re not stopping at 90 percent – the higher, the better for everyone.”

There has now been a total of 6314,182 doses given in New Zealand – 3,565,822 (85 percent) first doses and 2,748,360 (65 percent) second doses.

Epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker today called for more mass vaccination events, saying the first one united the country.

The Health Ministry confirmed 51 new community cases today, including four in Waikato.

There was no media conference today.

In its statement, the ministry said two of the Waikato cases were linked to earlier cases and they are investigating any links the other two may have.

“One lives in Hamilton and the other has an address in Kihikihi. It is possible that the Kihikihi case is the source of the wastewater detections in Te Awamutu, however this has not yet been confirmed.”

23 cases remain unlinked
It said 28 of today’s 51 cases were linked, of whom 18 were household contacts, and 23 remained unlinked with investigations continuing.

The ministry also said it could also confirm that there was one household in the area Wellsford with cases, after two positive detections in wastewater.

“Wellsford residents are urged to remain vigilant and get tested if they have any symptoms.”

There were 41 new community cases yesterday, all in Auckland except for one that was identified in Waikato.

There have now been 1945 cases in the current outbreak, and 4632 in this country since the pandemic began.

There are 29 people in hospital, including five in intensive care.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Ka pai Aotearoa, we’ve reached 100,000 COVID-19 doses for #SuperSaturday! pic.twitter.com/VBdTw8ab3R

— Ministry of Health – Manatū Hauora (@minhealthnz) October 16, 2021

Aotearoa New Zealand easily eclipsed the government’s “Super Saturday” day-long goal of 100,000 vaccine doses today, with 129,519 doses given out by 8pm closing.

By 2.39pm, there had already been a total of 90,616 doses across the country, according to the Ministry of Health.

Vaccine clinics were open across the country as health workers target a 90 percent vaccination milestone.

• READ MORE: Live Vaxathon covid-19 updates
• Earlier Vaxathon story

By 5.30pm, there had been a total of 124,669 doses.

Speaking on the televised Vaxathon event this afternoon, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said 150,000 doses was now the new target for the country.

Ardern and Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield were going around the Wellington region, as they joined the drive to get people vaccinated.

The ministry reported 41 new community cases of covid-19 in New Zealand today.

There was no media conference today. In a statement, the ministry said there were also two new cases in managed isolation.

It said 20 of the community cases were linked, and 21 remained unlinked with investigations continuing.

There were 124 unlinked cases from the past 14 days.

One of today’s new cases was in Waikato. The ministry said the case was a household member of two existing cases and was already in a quarantine facility in Auckland.

There are now 31 people in hospital, all in Auckland, including six in intensive care.

There were 65 new cases yesterday.

There have now been 1895 cases in the current community outbreak and 4580 since the pandemic began.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

A third woman who was with the two women who travelled to Northland also tests positive https://t.co/klbr0WLtAc

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) October 16, 2021

More than 6 million vaccine doses have now been given in New Zealand, with the vast majority of those who have caught covid-19 during the current outbreak unvaccinated.

Speaking at today’s government briefing – where it was revealed there were 55 new cases today – Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said three-quarters of the eligible population were either fully vaccinated or booked in to do so.

Hipkins said just three percent of those in the current outbreak were vaccinated.

• READ MORE: Covid-19 update: 55 cases in the community today
• RNZ’s live covid blog
• Other NZ covid lockdown reports

He said the best thing people could do to protect themselves and their whanau was to get vaccinated.

The government announced that the current covid-19 alert level 3 response in parts of Waikato and Northland will remain for another five days.

Auckland continues to remain at step 1 of level 3.

Truck driver case
Meanwhile, the Health Ministry said the risk from an Auckland-based truck driver who travelled to Northland on Saturday and had tested positive for covid-19 was low.

At today’s briefing, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said the case was currently being assessed to identify any exposure events.

He said the case investigation was still in the early stages, initial information suggested a limited scope of exposure in Northland, given alert level 3 precautions within the delivery sector.

“The person was there from 3am to 12pm delivering to a number of places most of which were closed because of alert level 3 arrangements there.”

The ministry announced later this afternoon that an early childhood education teacher in Auckland had tested positive and 11 of their close contacts included six children who were in two separate bubbles.

Dr Bloomfield said My Covid Record is now accessible to the public via mycovidrecord.nz.

People over 16 years will be able to view their vaccination record on this website by creating a my health account.

“From later November people will be able to access two different types of vaccination certificates: one for use in New Zealand and one for travel overseas.”

Dr Bloomfield said people can also request the Ministry of Health for their vaccination status.

The numbers

• There were 55 new cases reported today
• Of the new cases, 29 were epidemiologically linked, 26 were yet to be linked
• The total number of cases this outbreak is 1719
• There are 32 people in hospital

See how the day’s covid-19 developments unfolded with RNZ’s live blog.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The New Zealand government has set out a three-stage roadmap that gradually eases covid-19 restrictions in Auckland.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the government would take a careful, methodical approach to the changes.

From midnight tomorrow, Tāmaki Makaurau will remain in alert level 3 but Aucklanders will be able to connect with people outside their bubble outdoors, with no more than two households and 10 people mingling at a time.

• READ MORE: Other RNZ covid lockdown reports

Early childhood education will return as normal and people can move around Auckland for recreation, like visiting the beach or hunting.

At the second stage, retail shops can open with face masks and social distancing, public facilities such as pools and zoos will open and the number of people who can meet outdoors will increase to 25.

Hospitality venues will open at the third stage, seating people at a distance with a maximum capacity of 50 people.

Public health advice at this stage also indicates schools will be able to return after the school holidays on the October 18 – with a final decision to be made closer to the time, the prime minister said.

Outdoors makes the difference
Ardern said that being outdoors and the ventilation that provides makes all the difference.

“Don’t for a moment be tempted to suddenly, if the weather turns bad, switch to being in your home,” she said.

New Zealand reported 29 new community cases of covid-19 today before the Cabinet decision on alert levels.

In a statement, the Ministry of Health said there were also two new cases at the border.

It said 28 of the new cases were in Auckland and one was in Waikato.

Of the new cases, 21 were epidemiologically linked and eight were being investigated.

That brings the total number of community cases in the current outbreak to 1357. There have been 4025 cases since the pandemic began.

Lot of work done on step-wise process
Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said a lot of work had been done to evaluate the step-wise process.

“I think this is the important feature of this next four to eight weeks, being methodical and stepwise and doing it safely. As our vaccination rate goes up, that helps and it’s already helping.”

He said public health officials also looked carefully at the things in each step that would not increase the risk much at all, and it’s on the basis of reviewing the status each week that the decision has been made.

“Cabinet will review each step weekly to ensure it’s safe to move before confirming the next step. The wage subsidy will continue to be available,” Ardern said.

“In total, this phasing amounts to a careful and methodical transition plan for Auckland.

“At the end of these steps, we will then move to a national framework that reflects a more highly vaccinated population, allowing us the ability to deal with riskier settings such as large-scale events with the use of vaccine certificates.”

Still covid ‘zero-tolerance’
Covid-19 Response and Education Minister Chris Hipkins told RNZ Checkpoint preparations had been underway for some time for the three-step transition.

“If we look internationally, it’s countries that have stepped down well have stepped down slowly and consistently. Those countries that have moved faster tend to have ended up cycling backwards and forwards with their restrictions so that is something that we would like to try and avoid here if we can.”

He said the government was continuing to have a “zero tolerance approach towards covid-19. But the way we approach this will be a little different.”

Hipkins did not say if vaccination for school teachers would be mandatory, but signalled tougher rules for unvaccinated teachers would be introduced.

“It may be that those who are not vaccinated need to be tested more frequently, for example, there might be requirements for unvaccinated people working in schools and working with young people who can’t be vaccinated to be frequently tested.

“We’ll work our way through those we will talk to the sector about the practical realities of all of those other things.”

Opposition slams roadmap
National leader Judith Collins said the government’s “incompetence” had meant New Zealand was stuck in a “lockdown limbo” with no answers and no way out.

She said the situation was clearly out of control and worsening every day.

ACT leader David Seymour said the government should give the public a “proper plan” and let Aucklanders know when the finish line was in sight.

The Green Party said the government’s roadmap for Auckland risked the safety of vulnerable communities and children.

Co-leader Marama Davidson said now ws not the time to change the approach.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Parts of Waikato — including Raglan, Huntly, Ngāruāwahia and Hamilton City — will join Auckland in alert level 3 from midnight tonight, the New Zealand Prime Minister has confirmed.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield have given today’s briefing after three recently reported community covid-19 cases outside of Auckland.

This morning the Ministry of Health reported two new community cases of covid-19 in Waikato – one person aged in their 40s in Raglan and one in their 50s in Hamilton.

• READ MORE: Other NZ covid lockdown reports

There were 33 new community cases reported today, including one of the new Waikato cases.

Announcing that parts of the district would go into level 3 at 11.59pm tonight, Ardern said there would be spot checks around Hamilton boundary areas, but they would not be as rigorous as the boundary in Auckland as it was too difficult to have a hard boundary around Hamilton.

She said Cabinet intended for level 3 restrictions to apply for the next five days, which would give authorities the opportunity to contact trace and widely test in the coming days. The restrictions would then be assessed.

Ardern said the vast majority of the cases had not been vaccinated.

‘Vaccination makes a difference’
“Vaccination makes a difference, it keeps people safe,” she said.

“If we had a vaccination rate of 90 percent or above in either Hamilton or Raglan it is highly unlikely we would be here today announcing level 3 restrictions.

“Instead we would be able to rely on other tools like contact tracing and much lower level public health measures but while we are vaccinating we have fewer choices in how to react to cases.”

She said none of the three community cases outside of Auckland had been vaccinated.

“We’ve been advised that the household members of the truck driver are vaccinated and have not yet tested positive,” she said.

Watch the briefing live

Video: RNZ News

Ardern said the government was doing everything possible to keep cases confined to Auckland.

Auckland’s alert level will be reviewed tomorrow.

Waikato treatment
Ardern said the level 3 in Waikato would be treated distinctly from what was happening in Auckland.

Last night, the ministry reported an Auckland truck driver who had travelled to Palmerston North had tested positive for covid-19.

Ardern said today that with the Palmerston North case the source was known and Auckland based, but this was not the case for the Waikato cases.

Dr Bloomfield said he was not worried about community spread in Palmerston North, but people with symptoms should still get tested.

Yesterday in its daily update the Ministry of Health reported 27 new community cases of covid-19 in Auckland. One of these cases was a patient who went to Middlemore Hospital seeking treatment for issues unrelated to covid-19, but who then tested positive.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the New Zealand government still has “broad control” of the covid-19 delta outbreak in Auckland.

Ardern and Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield rep0rted at today’s latest government briefing that there were 19 community cases
— far less than half the previous day.

However, while yesterday’s total of 45 new community cases in Auckland was the highest it had been in some weeks, just four remained unlinked, Dr Bloomfield said.

• READ MORE: Other NZ covid lockdown reports

On Tuesday, new covid community cases had dropped to just eight.

Ardern said there was broad control of the outbreak, and “control is key”.

“We simply do not have enough people vaccinated in Auckland or in New Zealand to tolerate a widespread outbreak but maintaining control is not a given,” she said.

“We still need the restrictions that we’re using, I know they’re incredibly hard and they will ease but for now they’re doing a job for us that’s why we need people to keep following them.”

Two new sub-clusters
Dr Bloomfield said there were now two new sub-clusters in the city.

“One of which they’re calling the Southeast Auckland household cluster – there are five households in that one – and then there’s one just identified, the West Auckland cluster.

“It’s those two sub-clusters that are really giving rise to the new cases at the moment.

“So of the other ones that were active only none of those have actually had new cases in the last few days.”

Watch the update here:

Today’s New Zealand government covid media briefing. Video: RNZ News

Ardern said it was highly likely the boundary around the Auckland region would remain, even if restrictions were eased. The government was giving full consideration to easing restrictions, but removing the regional boundary was not under consideration.

Cabinet is set to review the country’s alert level settings on Monday.

“We are giving full consideration to easing [alert level restrictions], but there’s a number of ways we can consider that. What is not in consideration is removing that regional boundary at this time.”

83 percent of eligible Aucklanders get first dose
Ardern said only 3 percent of cases in this outbreak were fully vaccinated, with 83 percent of eligible Aucklanders now having received the first dose of the vaccine.

About 80 percent of the eligible population nationwide had either had its first dose or had booked in for the first dose.

Nationally, 92 percent of over 65s have had their first covid vaccine and nearly 90 percent have either had or are booked in to have this second.

“It is possible to hit 90 [percent] and we need everyone to put that effort in,” Ardern said.

“We can be world-leading in getting our population vaccinated.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins and Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield today gave a briefing on the vaccine rollout and current cases which showed a sharp jump over the past few days.

Dr Bloomfield confirmed there were 45 new community cases of covid-19 today – all in Auckland.

Of these cases, 33 were known to be household or contacts of existing cases. All had been isolating at home or in quarantine during their infectious period, Dr Bloomfield said.

• READ MORE: Other NZ covid lockdown reports
  

He said many of today’s cases were linked, and in some sense “they were expected”.

Hipkins said the 45 new cases were a “sobering number”. But because they were known cases, alert level decisions were made on many other factors.

“I would encourage people not to read too much into it. We’re still aiming to run this into the ground,” he said.

Dr Bloomfield said quite a proportion of the cases were among groups of people who were in transitional or emergency housing.

“Teams are working very hard with a range of agencies to support those people.”

He said everyone in Auckland must stay within their bubbles and wear face masks.

Watch the update

RNZ News video of the media briefing.

Dr Bloomfield said the Ministry of Health was asking workers in construction, hospitality and retail, who were working in level 3, to get two tests at least five days apart over the next couple of weeks, whether they had symptoms or not.

“I would like to emphasise, this testing is voluntary,” he said.

Hipkins said that at midnight the requirement would come into force for all border workers and roles where they might come into contact with covid-19 to be vaccinated.

As at this morning, 98 percent of active border workers had been vaccinated with at least one dose and 93 percent were fully vaccinated, he said.

That included 95 percent of port workers.

“I do want to remind anyone who works at the border but has yet to be vaccinated that they now have 24 hours until midnight tomorrow night to get their first vaccination if they wish to continue to work at the border,” Hipkins said.

Vaccine rollout update
Dr Bloomfield said 80 percent of the eligible population in Canterbury had now had its first dose of the vaccine. He said that by Christmas most Cantabarians would be fully vaccinated.

“Keep up the good work Canterbury,” Dr Bloomfield said.

Yesterday, 44,000 doses of the covid-19 vaccine were administered.

Nationally, 78 percent of the eligible population – 12 years and over – had had their first dose of the vaccine, Hipkins said.

Nearly half of the eligible population was now fully vaccinated.

Hipkins said 55 percent of Māori had had their first dose, 29 percent their second.

Among Pasifika, 71 percent had had their first dose, 40 percent their second.

‘Covid for Christmas’
Hipkins said he had not read National’s plan to reopen New Zealand in full yet.

“It’s clear that the National Party want to throw open the borders, have hundreds of thousands of people coming in. Therefore, one can conclude that the biggest promise they’re making at the moment is that they’re willing for Kiwis to get covid for Christmas.

“The reality here is that they haven’t provided any modelling for the number of Covid-19 cases that they would be willing to tolerate or what they would do in certain scenarios because it would almost certainly result in significant numbers of cases in the community.

“They’ve given no indication of what they would do around managing that.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Auckland Mayor Phil Goff has appealed to the 1.7 million people in the city to “roll up your sleeves” and get vaccinated immediately to help New Zealand cope better with the covid-19 pandemic.

Writing in The New Zealand Herald today to back the newspaper’s 90% Project for maximum vaccination, Goff said the the city should be aiming for a “summer of freedom for Tāmaki Makaurau”.

“It’s a much better scenario than staying at home in our bubbles, locked down at level 4, and at risk of a disease that may put you or your family in hospital,” he said.

• READ MORE: In spite of relentless media negativity, NZ’s covid story is largely successful
• Covid-19 update: 15 new community cases in NZ, all in Auckland, ministry says
• Other NZ covid lockdown reports

“The first option is one we all crave. To help achieve it, we need to get as many Aucklanders vaccinated as possible, as soon as possible.

“Ninety percent of the eligible population is a good target, which is why I support The New Zealand Herald’s 90% Project. If we can get higher than 90 per cent, that’s even better.

Goff said that yesterday the city had hit the target of 80 percent of Aucklanders having had at least one dose, with more than half of that number becoming fully vaccinated.

“More than 20,000 people a day have been getting immunised, but more than 200,000 still need to book or get their first vaccination,” he said.

Stringent measures
“New Zealand did the right thing in putting in place stringent measures to stop the incursion of covid-19 into our community. We did better than almost any other country.

“However, new variants of covid, currently delta, make it really hard to stop community transmission and we can’t continue indefinitely closing down our economy to stop its spread. The human and financial costs are huge. And sooner or later we will have to open up again to the world.”

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said at today’s covid media briefing that tools used in the future to fight covid-19 did not need to be as disruptive as the ones used now — such as lockdowns — as long as the country achieved a high vaccination rate.

Jacinda Ardern and Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield were speaking after the release of new modelling which suggests lockdowns may still be needed if the country achieved an 80 percent vaccination rate.

Ardern said vaccine certificates, better ventilation, some mask use, and the possibility of changing border restrictions so a full 14-day quarantine was not required could be used in the future.

But for now vaccination was the main tool.

“It all comes down to vaccination.”

Lockdowns needed in first phase
She said lockdowns were needed in the first phase of the pandemic because there were no vaccines and everyone had to be isolated.

“With vaccines, we can turn that model on its head,” she said, so positive cases could be isolated as others have the protection of vaccines.

“Children can’t be vaccinated. It will reach them. And we’ve seen it reach them in this outbreak,” she said.

The plan was never zero cases, but “zero tolerance” for covid, she said.

The Health Ministry announced 15 new community cases of covid-19 today, a drop of seven on yesterday.

Ardern said the government’s plan for the future, included aggressively isolating cases, catching cases at the border, and ensuring the health system was not overwhelmed.

“It’s not the Aotearoa way to leave anyone behind,” she said.

“There remains one simple message – Get vaccinated.”

Today was the second day that Auckland was at alert level 3 after five weeks in lockdown.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

On August 17, a 58-year-old man from Auckland became symptomatic and tested positive for covid-19. It was New Zealand’s first community case of the coronavirus in almost six months.

Within hours, the nation of five million moved into alert level four, part of its “go hard, go early” approach. All travel outside of people’s homes was forbidden, except to fetch supplies, visit pharmacies or exercise.

The country largely ground to a halt.

• READ MORE: If NZ’s covid elimination strategy is abandoned now ‘more Māori and Pasifika people will die’
• Other NZ covid lockdown reports

“We have seen the dire consequences of taking too long to act in other countries, not least our neighbours,” said Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, while announcing the cabinet’s decision to impose a lockdown that evening.

Within a few days, one case had grown to 21 cases. After a week, to 148 cases. By August 31, the cluster contained 612 cases.

Snap lockdown
One month after imposing the snap lockdown, New Zealand has bent the curve and may be able to eliminate an outbreak of the potent delta variant of COVID-19 – though it is no sure thing.

As of September 20, some 1051 people in Auckland and 17 people in the capital city, Wellington, have been infected with the virus, of whom 694 have recovered.

Contact tracers have methodically identified tens of thousands of contacts – and hundreds of locations of interest – part of an updated track-and-trace system repurposed to cast a much wider net around the far more transmissible delta variant.

The outbreak, now spread across 20 subclusters, 10 of which have been epidemiologically linked, presents the most serious challenge to elimination that New Zealand has faced so far. With its fragmented public health system under intense strain from decades of under-funding, any unchecked spread of the delta variant would see hospitals rapidly overwhelmed.

But New Zealanders rallied behind the restrictions, sticking to their “bubbles”, masking up and watching patiently as cases peaked, then began to decline – though the outbreak’s tail is proving persistent.

If the country does eliminate this outbreak, it would once again validate the “go hard, go early” approach that officials have taken over the past 18 months.

With Auckland moving yesterday to the more permissive alert level three, case numbers over the coming weeks will be closely watched for any sign of uncontained spread.

Entitlement and denunciation
Yet, as with previous outbreaks, the clamour from critics of the government started almost immediately, a chorus of whinge.

Business special interests laundered their messaging through an uncritical media – “certainty” they chanted, while pressuring for a move down alert levels.

“We also know that in lockdown Treasury has forecast it to cost the country NZ$1.45 billion per week – and that’s just the economic impact,” Canterbury Employers’ Chamber of Commerce chief executive Leeann Watson told broadcaster Newstalk ZB.

Incredibly, less than a week into lockdown, Export New Zealand executive director Catherine Beard complained to Stuff, the country’s most popular news website, that the business environment was getting “tough” for exporters, while lobbying for more managed isolation spots for business travellers – or self-isolation.

“Some of these are multimillion-dollar deals, so the situation is very stressful,” she said.

Some in the hospitality sector complained about limits on gatherings and threatened to withhold tax, while demanding “targeted” assistance from the government.

“Now it’s 100 percent [Ministry of] Health running the show,” said Hospitality New Zealand chief executive Julie White, according to Stuff. “No one is advising them commercially.”

Most New Zealanders would, presumably, prefer that the Health Ministry – as opposed to hospitality interest groups – responds to the threat presented by a lethal, airborne pathogen.

‘Glacial’ pace criticised
The “glacial” pace of the country’s vaccine rollout was also riffed off in headline after headline.

Perhaps, as the political opposition and reporters contend, the rollout has been “sluggish”.

Perhaps the government could have instructed the medical regulator Medsafe to conduct a less rigorous assessment of the Pfizer vaccine, under emergency protocols.

“Another [possibility] is,” Craig McCulloch, Radio New Zealand’s deputy political editor speculated, “that the government’s negotiators came late to the party, did a poor job and got a raw deal.”

Or perhaps soaring global demand amid the pandemic, Pfizer’s finite ability to supply vaccines to a vast suite of countries and New Zealand’s limited purchasing power and largely covid-free status explains the “delay”.

Certainly, the World Health Organisation has described vaccine hoarding by wealthy nations as approaching a “catastrophic moral failure”.

When Pfizer became able to deliver large shipments midway through July, New Zealand saw a dramatic scale-up in the vaccination programme, as officials had promised for months.

Rollout a success story
If anything, the nation’s rollout — a massive logistical undertaking — has largely been a success story, conducted in an environment of incredible uncertainty and reliant upon an already stretched workforce.

It has additionally played a key role in supporting vaccination efforts in the Cook Islands.

As of September 20, some 4,711,410 doses of the vaccine have been administered, tracking close to supply, with 1,618,673 people now fully vaccinated.

Amid the rising racket, the entitlement and denunciation, even commentators from abroad got in on the act.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson — agitating anti-lockdown sentiment — suggested that New Zealand provided a model for how his viewers would be subjugated by Joe Biden’s administration.

“How far can they go? […] A single covid case in New Zealand, not a death from covid, but a case of covid has shut down the entire country.”

Writing in Britain’s Daily Telegraph, one commentator called the outbreak “poetic justice” and claimed a “once-welcoming nation is turning into an isolated dystopia, where liberties are taken away in a heartbeat and outsiders are shunned”.

While these criticisms are couched in the language of defending civil liberties, they reduce to variants of the “learn to live with covid” argument.

Or put another way: “The cure cannot be worse than the disease”.

The economy must reign supreme, after all.

Sound familiar?

‘Needles in my eyes’
New Zealand’s elimination strategy relies on public buy-in. Recent polling shows that some 84 percent of the public supports the latest lockdown.

As with previous outbreaks, Ardern has used clear, empathetic language to reassure and unify an often politically divided nation. These briefings are held in Parliament’s theatrette and usually feature the Director-General of Health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield.

For many in New Zealand, the daily press briefings provide a detailed window into how authorities manage outbreaks and have been the most visible key to the elimination strategy’s success.

“To all Aucklanders, you have done an amazing job so far protecting yourselves, your family and your community,” Ardern said on September 13, while announcing that Auckland would stay in alert level four for another week. “We owe you a huge debt of gratitude … but the cases are telling us we have additional work to do.”

Voters rewarded Ardern’s Labour Party for this kind of humane approach and its exceptional management of the viral threat in the national elections last October, granting it an outright majority.

The political opposition judges these briefings a political threat, and routinely denigrates them as Ardern speaking from “The Podium of Truth”.

With the return of daily briefings on August 17, right-wing broadcasters and some journalists began to deride the briefings, at exactly the moment when trust in the authorities needed to be reinforced.

Undermining public perceptions
There is a difference between “holding power to account” and deliberately attempting, for purely partisan political reasons, to undermine public perceptions that the covid-19 response is being well managed.

“I tried, I really did, but I wanted to stick needles in my eyes by about four minutes in,” said Newstalk ZB’s Kate Hawkesby, the day after the return of the 1pm press conferences. “I’d forgotten how soul-destroying it is to be spoken to like a three-year-old.”

On the same station, Hawkesby’s husband, Mike Hosking, overdubbed turkey “gobbles” and truck horn sound effects onto an interview recorded with Associate Health Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall.

Newstalk ZB’s political editor, Barry Soper, in a report about an Auckland man whose kidney surgery was postponed due to staffing shortages, loaded his story’s preamble with phrases like “their altar” and “practise what they preach”.

He also issued a remarkable dog-whistle to New Zealand’s far-right, the kind of people who believe Ardern – a fairly mild political centrist – is turning the country into a “communist dictatorship”.

“If you have ever wondered what it must have been like to live in a totalitarian state, then perhaps wonder no more.”

This nonsense went on and on.

Moaning media
Some press gallery reporters began to complain about the length of Ardern’s introductions, while Jason Walls, a political reporter with Newstalk ZB, took to Twitter to moan about Dr Bloomfield saying “finally” two times.

This speaks to how the media has fundamentally misunderstood what the briefings are: public service announcements.

They are for the public. Reporters are invited as a check and, as such, should resist the urge to demand a say in how these announcements are structured.

Even The New York Times managed to launder messaging that targeted the briefings, quoting former National Party staffer and political commentator Ben Thomas – who appears fixated on denigrating Dr Bloomfield.

“He [Dr Bloomfield] has … a cult-like following,” said Thomas. “The country has a huge kind of parasocial devotion to him, which is very new to New Zealand.”

Apparently, Thomas has not heard of Michael Joseph Savage, who founded New Zealand’s welfare state in the 1930s and whose framed photo hung in homes throughout the country for decades.

Regardless, all of this is a fairly obvious partisan political effort, driven by both ideology and market dynamics.

Many reporters and commentators at New Zealand Media and Entertainment (NZME), which owns The New Zealand Herald and Newstalk ZB, seem unable to accept that their preferred political tribe is no longer in power.

More critically, in an age where the news media increasingly attempts to attract subscribers by catering to their social and political values, NZME appears to be ring-fencing centre-to-far-right eyeballs.

It is, essentially, becoming New Zealand’s Fox News.

A brave new world
The sense in New Zealand is that this may be the last of the nation’s sledgehammer-style lockdowns, though one hopes officials do not retire lockdowns altogether.

The goal is to get as many people as possible vaccinated, assess the impact of opening up, and then tentatively start easing some border restrictions, if possible.

No doubt, certain industries – tourism, hospitality, horticulture, media – will continue to apply relentless pressure.

Yet, when the nation reconnects more fully to the networks of global trade and travel, the super-highways of hyper-globalisation that have spread disease and death around the world, when the inevitable outbreaks come, there will be a toll.

Glen Johnson is an independent New Zealand journalist who worked as a foreign correspondent for 11 years, predominantly out of the Middle East and North Africa. His work has appeared in The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Seattle Times, Vice, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, Reuters, Le Monde Diplomatique, Balkan Insight, Al Jazeera and The New Zealand Herald, among others. His article was first published by Al Jazeera English and is republished with the permission of the author.

Breaching covid-19 restrictions in New Zealand will now mean an increased infringement fee of up to $12,000 for individuals when imposed by a court, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced.

Speaking at the daily covid-19 briefing today, Ardern said fines for breaches of the Covid-19 Public Health Response Act were being increased because of the view that the infringement regime did not reflect the severity of breaches.

“Our success has been really based on the fact that people by and large have been really compliant … however, there has been the odd person [who] has broken the rules and put others at risk,” she said.

• READ MORE: Covid-19: 14 new cases in the community today – Bloomfield
• NZ experts say Auckland move to alert level 3 ‘risky’ – but PM still confident
• Other NZ covid lockdown reports

“Specifically we’ve had some people break out of MIQ, including in a handful of cases with covid, who have posed a threat to the community.”

She said there were some issues very early on, but they had reduced when the government introduced fines for those who breached the rules, such as alert levels or breaking the rules of MIQ.

“It’s Cabinet’s view that these fees don’t properly reflect the significant social and economic impacts of a single case of covid-19 getting out into the community, and nor do they act as a sufficient incentive to play by the rules,” Ardern said.

Like with a traffic ticket, people can be issued an infringement notice for breaking the rules. If the infringement fee is not paid in full by the due date it is referred to the Ministry of Justice for enforcement, when it becomes a “fine”.

On-the-spot fines
On-the-spot infringement notice fees were initially set at $300, with fines of up to $1000 when imposed by a court, but Ardern today said they would increase.

Infringement notices would increase to $4000 for individuals, and $12,000 for companies, while fines imposed by courts would increase to a maximum of $12,000 for individuals and $15,000 for companies.

Covid-19 infringement fines. Video: RNZ News

People convicted for criminal offences — such as intentionally failing to comply with an order, or intentionally threatening, assaulting, or hindering an enforcement officer — may also face fines and prison.

The fine for criminal offending would increase from $4000 to $12,000 or six months imprisonment, with an additional fee of up to $15,000 introduced for companies.

Ardern said those were maximums subject to the court’s discretion, and would take effect from November 2021, subject to the passing of the Covid-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill.

These fines are for people who do something specified as an infringement offence in a covid-19 order.

She said there was a balance between making sure people understood the rules, but also the consequences of breaking those rules.

Setting up the framework
“I think the sheer magnitude of having someone with covid-19 who breaks those rules, the impact on the community, we need to make sure that the fines really do reflect the gravity of the situation.”

The prosecutions were not made by politicians, she said.

“The prosecution decisions aren’t ultimately made by us. We need to set up the framework and the infringements that are available should those prosecutions be taken. And I think actually from the general public there would probably be a bit of a view that when you are putting people at risk you need to have an infringement regime that reflects the seriousness of some of that rule-breaking.

“Where they’re used and how they’re used, what fines are awarded, that sits out of our hands.”

In a statement, Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said examples of infringement offences would include failure to wear a face covering in places where it is mandatory.

Criminal offences could include travelling without permission, or travelling for a purpose other than what was permitted, from an alert level 4 or 3 area to alert level 2.

14 new community cases
The Ministry of Health has reported 14 new community cases of covid-19 in the community today — a drop from the past three days.

In a statement, the ministry said there is also one historical case at the border.

Thirteen of today’s cases have been epidemiologically linked while one is still being investigated.

Today’s number of community cases includes one positive result from Upper Hauraki, which is under a section 70 order. They are a household contact who was tested yesterday, the ministry said.

“Two previously confirmed cases from Saturday and from yesterday have now been reclassified as under investigation,” Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said.

“As a result, today’s net increase is 13 cases.”

Dr Bloomfield said the ministry expected another further 50 to 60 cases from household contacts in the next week or so.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Auckland will move to alert level 3 from 11.59pm on Tuesday night, and stay in level 3 for at least two weeks, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced.

The rest of New Zealand will remain in level 2, but will move from gatherings of 50 up to gatherings of 100.

Meanwhile, part of northern Waikato has been issued a section 70 order, requiring people who live or work there to stay at home.

• READ MORE: Three new NZ ‘breakout’ covid cases in Waikato include two students
• Other NZ covid lockdown reports

“We are not stepping out of level 4 because the job is done, but nor are we moving because we don’t think we can achieve the goal of stamping out covid-19 – we are moving because level 3 still provides a cautious approach while we continue to stamp out covid-19,” Ardern said.

“It means staying in your bubble, it means contactless transactions and keeping your distance. It means we say thank you to Auckland for their tireless work, and we collectively keep going.”

Twenty two new cases were reported today, the majority of them household or known contacts. Five were unlinked, and three of those were within one family, and there was a tentative link for that family, Ardern said.

Three of the new cases are in Whakatīwai near Kaiaua in the Firth of Thames, northern Waikato, but are being counted in the Auckland total.

300 swabs
Ardern said testing so far had included household contacts, corrections staff, police staff, court staff, and 300 swabs had already been taken in the small community.

“We do want to make sure we are keeping the community safe,” she said.

Watch the PM’s live announcement here

Director of General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said he was issuing a section 70 order requiring people who live or work in the area around Mangatangi, in northern Waikato, to stay at home. Ardern said it was effectively a “bespoke level 4”.

Dr Bloomfield said the order was for people living in an area north of SH2 centred on Mangatangi.

“That will effectively extend the road boundary to the east of Maramarua … and also to the southeast of Miranda on the Firth of Thames.”

Ardern said level 4 had been tough but it had also made a difference.

Almost all cases of the last 14 days had either been household or known contacts, and wastewater testing suggested there was no significant undetected transmission.

No widespread clusters
There had not been widespread clusters around workplaces, and of the cases where a link had been established, none had resulted from people accessing essential services.

Protections were still in place in level 3, she said.

“That remains critical and we ask everyone to play their part… we’re moving now because the advice we have is we don’t have widespread transmission across Auckland, if everyone continues to play their part we can stamp it out,” she said.

Dr Bloomfield said the ministry was confident there was not widespread undetected transmission. The difference with level 3 this time was it came with high and increasing levels of vaccination, he said.

Ardern reminded people that in level 3 they could make minor changes to bubbles such as bringing in an elderly relative who was not part of another bubble, but should not visit friends or break bubbles.

“Once in a household everyone is at risk of getting delta, so if you break your bubble, know that the consequence may be spreading covid back into your house to your loved ones,” Ardern said.

Masks mandatory at high schools
Schools in level 3 would be largely closed. Cabinet had made the decision to make masks mandatory at high schools at alert level 3, Ardern said.

People attending an essential service must also wear a mask, and people were encouraged to do so whenever they leave their home.

People over 65 in Auckland should stay home until they had been vaccinated, she said.

“We have been doing direct outreach to all our over-65s who haven’t had their first dose yet in Auckland. That amounts to about 23,000 people.

“Last week a letter was sent to those over-65s who we had details for. Today we’re commencing an outbound call campaign… these will average about 8000 calls a day.”

People with a booking in the future could bring it forward, she said, adding pharmacies were offering delivery services, as were supermarkets.

People travelling over the boundary for personal reasons were now being required to carry evidence of having taken a test within the last seven days.

Exemptions were available through the Ministry of Health.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Zealand has reported 15 new cases of covid-19 in the community, the Ministry of Health has announced.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said there were no unlinked cases today.

The one case from yesterday that was not linked to the outbreak, had now been linked, Dr Bloomfield said.

• READ MORE: Other NZ covid lockdown reports

He said 10 cases in the outbreak were yet to be epidemiologically linked.

Dr Bloomfield said the focus for testing was in the following suburbs – Massey, Māngere, Favona, Papatoetoe, Manurewa and Ōtara.

Anyone with cold and flu symptoms was urged to get a test.

He said families with children were urged to get tested together.

15,685 essential workers tested
So far this month, 15,685 essential workers in the Auckland region have been tested with no positive cases identified.

“On contact tracing we’re now focusing our efforts on 1242 contacts that are under active management. This is a change to the reporting total context for the whole outbreak,” he said.

“The number of contacts under active management is now down to a much smaller number as … majority of our contacts have now either returned negative tests or have had exposures more than 18 days ago and we’re not generating significant numbers of new contacts outside of households.

“There was a positive wastewater result received from a sample taken last week in Pukekohe.”

Dr Bloomfield said Public Health had advised there were four cases in the area who were in quarantine but had now returned home.

“This could explain the result. But anyone in the Pukekohe area, who has symptoms, please go and get tested.”

There were no other “unexpected detections” in wastewater samples in Auckland or around the country that had returned positive results.

Supermarkets on random agenda
On random surveillance testing at supermarkets, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the government had considered the option in case “you want to do a lot of surveillance testing very quickly at sites where you haven’t had ongoing testing”.

The health team had advised that “in the current environment testing stations have established for symptomatic and their asymptomatic plans are still reaching into those communities at high rates”.

“But we continue to say let’s consider everything and certainly supermarkets have been on our agenda for something that should be considered.”

Dr Bloomfield said testing was not done at random, but specific suburbs had been identified for it.

Yesterday, the ministry reported 33 new community cases of covid-19.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Auckland will stay in covid-19 alert level 4 for another week until 11.59pm next Tuesday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says.

Cabinet has made an in principle decision that Tāmaki Makaurau will then move to alert level 3.

The rest of New Zealand will remain in alert level 2 until Tuesday next week.

• READ MORE: Other NZ covid lockdown reports

Alert level settings will be reviewed next Monday.

Ardern said Cabinet had made an indicative decision about Auckland, but had not made one about the rest of New Zealand moving to alert level 1.

While there was nothing to indicate there was covid-19 outside of Auckland, lower restrictions in the rest of the country would mean a far greater risk of spread if it did escape, she said.

Having the rest of the country at alert level 2 gave a greater chance of stamping the virus out if it did get out of Auckland, she said.

Auckland has been at alert level 4 since midnight on August 17 after an outbreak of the delta variant of covid-19.

Cabinet had seen evidence and advice that alert level 4 was working, saying it had consistently reduced the R value below 1, and it is now about 0.6, Ardern said.

Watch the media conference

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield brief the news media. Video: RNZ News

“On that basis and on the advice of the Director-General of Health, Auckland will remain at alert level 4 until 11.59pm next Tuesday, the 21st of September.”

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said the “lockdown is working” and it is only a small number of cases that the ministry is focused on.

“The testing is at a good level … so our view and our advice is that another week in lockdown in alert level 4 in Auckland gives us our best chance to really finish the job off here.

“Our view is we are doing everything right. It is paying off and we need to see this through and there is good reason to want to eliminate the virus again,” Dr Bloomfield said.

“It does allow us to enjoy a full range of activities and for the economy to really crank back up again.”

He said the focus for the next week was finding cases.

Cases and testing
Ardern said today there were 33 new community cases to report, but only one of them was currently unlinked.

“Likewise of the cases reported yesterday, just one remains unlinked to the wider outbreak at this point,” she said.

Ardern said that in some cases where an epidemiological link had not been able to be built, the genome sequencing was still able to tell authorities how the case fitted into the outbreak.

They expect to have more information about the one as-yet unlinked case reported today.

Ardern said one reason for the bigger numbers over the weekend was high rates of transmission within households.

Dr Bloomfield mentioned yesterday, about 16 percent of very close contacts become cases.

“That in and of itself will generate about another 50 cases in the coming days and we’re starting to see some of those come through.”

The number of unlinked cases went up and down every day, Dr Bloomfield said.

At 9am there were 17 unlinked cases but only a small number of those the ministry was really worried about.

Ardern said surveillance testing of healthcare workers and essential workers had also not identified any transmission.

“It’s also clear there is not widespread transmission of the virus in Auckland.”

Vaccinations
Ardern said the government wanted as many Aucklanders as possible to have had their first dose of the covid-19 vaccine by the end of the week. She said people booked for October should consider going online again and seeing if more bookings had opened up.

Another option was going to a drive-through vaccination clinic, with no need for booking.

Ardern said she stood by her previous statements that the government did not want to continue to use lockdowns, but the country needed to make sure that enough New Zealanders had been vaccinated.

“That’s why New Zealanders are empowered too. They have the chance to move away from lockdowns as much as we do, by being vaccinated.”

Message to Aucklanders
“To all Aucklanders, you’ve done an amazing job so far protecting yourselves, your family and your community,” Ardern said.

“We owe you a huge debt of gratitude … but the cases are telling us we have additional work to do.”

She said that four weeks into lockdown, it might be tempting to relax their bubble, but she asked everyone to treat every day as seriously as they did from day one.

People should have an assigned person who went to the supermarket, Ardern said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Covid-19 numbers dropped slightly today to 20 new community cases, while Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced a deal with Denmark to bring 500,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine to this country.

The number of new delta variant community cases in New Zealand dropped back to 20 cases from yesterday’s 23, which was the highest in several days.

At today’s media update, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said all the new cases were in Auckland.

• READ MORE: Other NZ covid lockdown reports

The total number of cases in the current community outbreak is 922. Eighteen people are in hospital and four are in ICU.

There were also three new cases in managed isolation.

“We do not have widespread community transmission,” Dr Bloomfield said at the press conference, noting that the source of most of the cases is clear and more are being found all the time.

“Casual fleeting transmission, we haven’t really seen any cases from that.”

Dr Bloomfield said no staff or patients had returned a positive test following the three community cases announced last night from Middlemore Hospital.

The person who tested positive at Middlemore Hospital last weekend had nine other family members who had tested positive, providing a clear link to the wider outbreak, Dr Bloomfield said.

“I just want to emphasise the importance of anyone who needs care for any reason to seek that care,” Dr Bloomfield said.

“I want to reassure people that our hospitals are safe.”

Vaccines coming from Denmark
The government has secured an extra half a million doses of Pfizer covid-19 vaccines from Denmark that will start arriving in New Zealand within days, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced today.

“This is the second and larger agreement the government has entered into to purchase additional vaccines to meet the significantly increased demand through September before our large shipments land in October,” Ardern said.

Ardern thanked the Danish government and European Commission for facilitating the deal, which added to another 250,000 doses from Spain announced last week.

“Combined, the Denmark and the Spain deals leave us in the strongest position possible to vaccinate at pace,” and move beyond life with tough covid restrictions, she said.

“There is now nothing holding us back.”

Ardern also announced that 500,000 Aucklanders were now fully vaccinated. More than 26,000 were vaccinated just yesterday.

“Thank you Auckland, and keep it up. You are doing the very best you can do right now to avoid future scenarios like the one we are in.”

Alert levels to be considered
Cabinet is set to meet tomorrow to look at alert levels. Auckland has been in alert Level 4 since August 17.

Ardern refused to speculate today on what cabinet might do.

However, the recent bump in new cases and concerns about unexplained cases at Middlemore Hospital have had several experts predicting Level 4 will last longer than this coming week.

Auckland Mayor Phil Goff said it was likely there would be a further delay.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Zealand health officials are investigating a mystery case of covid-19 who spent time in hospital and interacted with seven police officers before she knew she was infected.

The woman was swabbed as a precaution when she went to Middlemore Hospital yesterday for a non covid-related reason.

She spent two hours at the hospital’s emergency department and short stay ward, and the positive result came back after she had left.

• READ MORE: Other NZ covid lockdown reports
• RNZ covid updates

She had also had contact with seven police officers on Wednesday morning.

The officers were wearing masks but have been stood down as a precaution.

The hospital staff were wearing full protective gear and are deemed to be low risk, but 36 patients were being asked to isolate.

New Zealanders are being told to keep covid-19 testing numbers up over the weekend ahead of next week’s alert level decision.

Monday alert levels meeting
Cabinet will meet on Monday to decide whether any parts of the country can move down an alert level.

More than 14,000 swabs were processed yesterday.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said 7000 of those tests were from the Auckland region.

“This continues to be giving us confidence about the outbreak, and whether or not it is controlled, and one thing I would like to emphasise is this weekend is critical that we get high testing numbers.

“So anyone who is symptomatic, particularly in Tāmaki Makaurau, please do go and get a test.”

The numbers

• There are 11 new cases of covid-19 in the community today.
• There are now 879 total cases, with 288 cases having now recovered.
• There are 29 unlinked cases, including six from today.
• Six new cases are in managed isolation and two historical cases were reported today.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

A person tested positive for covid-19 today at Auckland’s Middlemore Hospital emergency department after turning up for an unrelated issue, the NZ Ministry of Health has confirmed.

In a statement, the ministry said the person presented with a non-covid-19 problem.

They had been assessed in the emergency department and spent a short amount of time in the adult short stay ward before deciding to go home.

• READ MORE: RNZ’s wrap of the delta covid outbreak Day 23 – what happened
• Other NZ covid lockdown reports

The patient’s answers indicated they had no exposure to covid-19, no symptoms, nor had they been at any location of interest, the ministry said.

The patient consented to a covid-19 swab but made the decision to leave prior to the result being available.

Their covid-19 test later came back positive.

The patient had been informed of their positive result, and they were now isolating, the ministry said.

The other patients who may have been exposed have all been identified, informed and are isolating.

All staff at Middlemore Hospital’s emergency department were wearing full PPE and the risk was low, so no staff were being stood down, the ministry said.

The Ministry of Health said more information would be provided tomorrow.

New cases down to 13
Earlier, the ministry reported that new daily covid-19 community case numbers dropped again to 13 today — all in Auckland.

At today’s media conference, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said more than half of the cases already had links made to the current outbreak.

There are now a total of 868 cases related to the delta outbreak in Auckland. There are 31 people in hospital today, all in Auckland. Five are in ICU or a high dependancy unit, three are requiring ventilation.

There were also two cases reported in managed isolation today.

Yesterday, there were 15 cases reported in the community.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.