The Delta variant of Covid-19 is like a “whole new virus”, so the country may not see new case numbers level off until about today or tomorrow, the Director-General of Health says.
Dr Ashley Bloomfield told Breakfast he was expecting more cases to come overnight.
“It could be another big number again today. This is Delta, and it’s showing itself as Delta…it’s like a whole new virus.”
But, he said the country was “pulling out all the stops” to try and combat its increased infectiousness.
People were now getting tested at rates twice that of last year and thousands more people were isolating even within their own homes, said Bloomfield.
Bloomfield said yesterday’s news that there were 62 new cases in the community was “a higher number than any of us would have liked”.
But, he added, it was “not too bad” considering there were hundreds of locations of interest and thousands of contacts.
It was also reassuring that most of the cases being detected recently are household contacts or close contacts of previously-identified cases, Bloomfield said.
He said he was hoping case numbers would level off, then begin to drop, in the coming days as the effects of Alert Level 4 kick in.
“This is really where it’s so important everyone sticks to their guns around the Alert Level 4 restrictions.”
As for the South Island and Stewart Island/Rakiura, which hasn’t detected a single case, Bloomfield said it was “so far so good” for them.
In the coming days, Bloomfield said he and his team would be advising Cabinet to consider moving parts of the country down to Alert Level 3. His team are currently trying to figure out which parts of the country that would include.
Cabinet will be meeting on Friday to consider any changes to alert levels for areas outside of Auckland. These will be announced on Friday 3pm.
Auckland University’s Shaun Hendy says the increased infectiousness of the Delta variant is evident. (Source: Other)
Auckland University Covid-19 modeller Shaun Hendy told Breakfast he was also expecting case numbers to start to become steady in the next few days, and then decrease.
He said it was good to see case numbers weren't doubling, as what happened to Delta outbreaks overseas.
However, Hendy said there was "an element of bad luck" that there were superspreader events that happened while the virus was undetected in the community.
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