Cabinet has confirmed Auckland will spend at least two more weeks in full lockdown, with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern urging caution for the rest of the country
Auckland will stay in Level 4 lockdown for at least another fortnight, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has confirmed – but Northlanders are set to receive an early reprieve and move down to Level 3 later this week.
Speaking to media on Monday afternoon, Ardern also urged caution as the rest of the country prepared to move to Level 3 at 11.59pm on Tuesday, saying the change did not mean freedom, but caution.
The day’s Cabinet meeting essentially served as an opportunity to rubber-stamp the changes it had announced in principle on Friday.
Ardern said there had been no further positive results from wastewater testing in Christchurch, giving ballast to the hypothesis that it had come from cases in the city’s managed isolation facilities, while testing across the country had thrown out one additional positive case, the contact of an existing case in Wellington who had been in isolation.
Northland, which had initially been kept at Level 4 with Auckland, would move to Level 3 at 11.59pm on Thursday, provided the results of wastewater testing and contact tests due before then were as expected.
Ardern said Cabinet still intended to keep Auckland at Level 4 for another two weeks, and would meet again on Monday September 13 to look at the next steps for the city.
“To move Auckland down a level, which is our absolute goal, we need to be confident we don't have Delta circulating undetected in the community, and we need to be confident any cases we may have are contained and isolated,” she said.
“Please remember that Level Three does not mean freedom – it means caution, it means staying in your bubble and it means distance, it means contactless transactions.”
“As we saw from this outbreak, it only took a week for one case to spread across the city, and that's why we're working so hard to get this right.”
The city had “done a lot of the heavy lifting” to welcome home returning Kiwis through MIQ facilities, and deserved the country’s gratitude.
Adding another notion of caution as more businesses outside Auckland prepared to open up for contactless services, Ardern said: “Please remember that Level 3 does not mean freedom – it means caution, it means staying in your bubble and it means distance, it means contactless transactions.”
Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said there were some encouraging signs in the recent case numbers and statistics, with nearly three-quarters of the 83 cases announced on Sunday creating no new exposure events – suggesting they had been isolating since the lockdown began.
Only 28 percent of the day’s cases were considered to be infectious in the community, which Bloomfield saying those exposures may have simply been a visit to a supermarket or healthcare provider as allowed under Level 4.
While there were 101 essential workers among the cases in the current outbreak, many of those were from early on, with just four essential workers who had been infectious in the workplace and just seven who had been infected in the workplace.
Case numbers tumble
Case numbers have tumbled significantly in the latest daily Covid-19 update, with just 53 new cases reported on Monday.
Compared to the 83 new cases on Sunday, that's a major drop, but it's unclear whether it might be a result of fewer tests being conducted. On Sunday, just over 16,000 tests were processed at labs across New Zealand, compared to more than 23,000 on Saturday.
The number of people in hospital has also risen to 37, five of whom are in ICU. All are in stable condition, according to the Ministry of Health press statement.
Monday also marked the first day that cases involved in the latest outbreak were deemed to be recovered. Alongside one recovery in MIQ, two community cases have recovered from Covid-19.
The new cases bring the total number of cases involved in the Delta outbreak to 564. This can be broken down further into seven sub-clusters, including the Māngere church sub-cluster which now encompasses 280 cases and the Birkdale social group linked to 79 cases.
While Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern provided more information during Sunday's Covid-19 update about the source of the previous day's cases, that data was not available in the ministry's Monday media release.
The ministry also provided less information than usual about contact tracing, saying only that 34,120 contacts had been identified and around 87 percent of them had had a test.
Sunday saw a dip in vaccinations, to 47,897 doses, but the ministry said this was a record for a Sunday.
Vaccine-related death
On Monday, the Ministry of Health also reported in a separate statement that a woman is suspected to have died of vaccine-induced heart inflammation, called myocarditis.
This is the first death in New Zealand suspected to be linked to the vaccine. More than 3.3 million doses have been administered across the country to date.
The chair of the Covid-19 Vaccine Independent Safety Monitoring Board, which reviews every death that might be linked to a Covid-19 vaccine, said this was the first such case where further investigation was warranted.
"We want to ensure that the outcomes from this investigation are widely available for others to learn from. The findings will be published to increase the scientific knowledge about vaccine-induced myocarditis," Dr John Tait said.
"The Pfizer vaccine is highly effective in protecting against serious illness and death from Covid-19, and we remain confident about using it in New Zealand."
Symptoms of myocarditis include new onset chest pain, shortness of breath and an abnormal heartbeat. Anyone experiencing these symptoms in the days after being vaccinated should seek medical attention, the ministry said.
