Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says she is not shocked by the sharp increase in community Covid-19 case numbers, which reached a record 810 on Sunday.
“No, no, because we’ve been expecting it,” she told Breakfast on Monday.
“Even from the moment we first had Omicron in the community at that stage we were preparing for the fact that we could hit up to a 1000 in six to 12 days. It has taken longer than that and that is because of the efforts of everyone to really slow down the virus. We have been expecting growth.
"This is exactly where we expected we would head, albeit at a slower pace than probably we’d anticipated.”
Ardern said phase two of the Government’s Omicron response was approaching and the country’s move into it was being discussed by Cabinet.
Phase two will begin when there are more than 1000 cases per day. Ardern told Breakfast the country is “almost there”.
The phase will also see the isolation period for positive cases go down to 10 days and for contacts, seven days.
Rapid antigen tests will start to come into play, with the tests being used for return-to-work testing.
It means critical workers deemed close contacts can return to work after producing a negative RAT test.
Ardern said her advice for Kiwis was to “give some thought” to how they would get through isolating at home and to get the booster as soon as they were eligible.
Epidemiologist professor Michael Baker has said record case numbers are not showing Omicron’s true spread.
He said the real number could be as much as 10 times the official figures, with a delay in recording infections also possibly skewing numbers.
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