Auckland is expected to move to Alert Level 3, Step 2 on Tuesday night, but a modeller says the move is still “risky”.
Last Monday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Cabinet had made an in-principle decision to ease restrictions in Auckland from 11.59pm this Tuesday. It would allow more people to gather outdoors and retail to open with restrictions, among other changes .
But with the country reporting some of the highest daily Covid-19 cases it has ever seen in the past week, one Covid-19 modeller said easing restrictions in Auckland would “contribute” to transmission.
“We’ve got increasing vaccination rates which is making it harder for the virus to spread. The virus hits more dead ends,” Canterbury University’s Professor Michael Plank told 1News.
At the same time, “there are more people out and about in the community at the moment”, he said.
“These two things are keeping each other in check, and that’s allowing cases to continue to increase at a steady rate.”
He said case numbers were roughly doubling every 12 days in the past month, and there wasn’t yet sign it was levelling out.
If the current trajectory continued, and pandemic restrictions stayed about the same as they were now, “it’s quite likely we could see cases peak somewhere between 200 and 300 around early December”, Plank said.
However, if restrictions were eased and the virus had more opportunity to spread, New Zealand could be seeing about 400 to 500 community cases a day by Christmas, he said.
“[Easing restrictions] does look risky at the moment with cases at the highest they’ve ever been and increasing hospitalisations … and our contact tracing system is looking pretty stretched,” Plank said.
“If it were up to me, I would probably keep things as they are for a while longer and hope that we start to see signs those case numbers are flattening out and starting to come down.
“But, appreciate there’s no easy answer with these restrictions at the moment and any restrictions that we do have do cause pain for businesses and for people unable to go out and do the things they want to do.”
The Government is expected to make an announcement on Monday about whether Auckland could move to Level 3, Step 2.
Cabinet will also be considering Alert Level settings for the northern part of Northland, which is currently at Alert Level 3 .
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