Posts
Be warned New Zealanders!
Billy te Kahika talked about this a couple of weeks ago and has repeated his warning
Just as an aside: Brisbane is under lockdown but as of yesterday the planes were still flying into Auckland from Brisbane, days after a "travel bubble" with Brisbane was announced.
Coronavirus: Level 4
lockdown probably needed if
UK COVID strain gets past the
border - expert
7 January, 2021
Kiwis are being warned if there was an outbreak of the UK strain of coronavirus in Auckland, a repeat of August's level 3 lockdown probably wouldn't be sufficient to contain it.
The B.1.1.7 variant - estimated to be at least 50 percent more infectious than others - is behind the UK's devastating third wave of COVID-19. It's put the country back into lockdown, with the daily death toll back above 1000 for the first time since April.
"With the old strain if you went on to infect two people, now with this new strain you might infect three," University of Auckland physicist and disease modeller Shaun Hendy told Newshub.
"It's certainly more serious and it could mean we could have a much more rapid spread - obviously that could pose challenges for the way we control the disease."
While it doesn't sound like much, the growth is exponential. For example, if a person on average infects two others, after five transmission chains 32 people are infected; if they infect three, it's 243 - nearly eight times more.
A handful of B.1.1.7 cases have been picked up at the border here. Half of the new cases reported at Thursday's 1pm update were of the new variant.
"We know there's still risks at our borders with the increase in numbers overseas. We're certainly still at risk," said Hendy. "We need to keep scanning, turn on your Bluetooth in the COVID Tracer app and use masks wherever you can."
If we aren't vigilant - and the numbers suggest we're falling short, with only a fraction of adults regularly using the app - we risk another economically devastating level 4 lockdown.
"Potentially a level 3 lockdown would not necessarily be effective. It possibly wouldn't be able to eliminate the disease - so potentially what we're looking at is using a level 4 lockdown," said Hendy.
"You just have to look at what's happening overseas to see just how lucky we are in New Zealand - it's very easy to be complacent here because life looks normal. But it's not normal for people overseas... [Don't] go to work if you have any symptoms at all."
Analysis of the new variant and how it would fare under various lockdown scenarios by University of Calgary researcher Malgorzata Gasperowicz found while a New Zealand level 4 would work, it could potentially take three times longer to stamp out than the original strain. New Zealand spent just over a month at level 4 in March and April, and another few weeks at level 3.
But if we move fast as soon as the first locally transmitted cases are found - like in August - Hendy says it shouldn't take that long. New Zealand was recording double-digit numbers of cases in March before the alert levels were even made public, let alone enacted - but in August, Auckland went into level 3 the day after the first handful of cases were detected.
"The good thing is we know that level 4 is very effective and based on what we learnt from March and April, we think that would be good enough to eliminate the disease," said Dr Hendy.
New Zealand's strict approach to COVID-19 has been lauded worldwide, resulting in fewer deaths and better economic recovery than in nations which either moved too slow or not hard enough.
Covid-19: Health officials confirm 31 new cases of coronavirus, first case of South African variant found
10 January, 2021
There have been 31 new cases of Covid-19 over three days at the border, including 11 international mariners.
There are currently 75 active cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand, all in managed isolation.
Of those, 19 have been identified as the highly-transmissible B.1.1.7 strain from the UK – most of these people have travelled into the country from the UK, via the UAE, Qatar or Singapore, health authorities said.
This brings the total number of confirmed cases in New Zealand to date to 1863.
The new cases arrived from all over the world, including the UK, India, Zimbabwe, Austria, Russia, the Ukraine and Poland.
On Sunday, the Ministry of Health said the number of new cases reinforced the need for ongoing vigilance at the border, particularly as Covid-19 continues to “accelerate” overseas.
The Ministry said it was continuing to monitor overseas developments “very closely” through the holiday period.
South African strain detected
New Zealand has recorded its first case of a South African strain of Covid-19 after earlier finding cases of the UK strain had got in.
Both strains of the virus are more-transmissible than regular Covid-19.
The South African strain – 501.V2 – was detected in New Zealand within the past three days.
Oxford University regius professor of medicine Sir John Bell recently said his "gut feeling" was that the vaccines already on stream would be effective against the new UK strain first identified in Kent.
“[But] I don't know about the South African strain, I think that's a big question mark.”
Bell told Times Radio he was more concerned about this strain than the UK one “by some margin”.
“The mutations associated with the South African form are really pretty substantial changes in the structure of the protein,” he said.
The Ministry of Health said the person with the South African strain had come to New Zealand from South African via United Arab Emirates.
The variant was discovered in genome testing.
The patient was now in quarantine.
International mariners
Eleven cases which arrived on January 6 were from a group of international mariners.
Only three of these cases were current, while eight have been identified as historical cases.
A total of 190 mariners arrived on Wednesday and are staying in managed isolation and quarantine facilities in Christchurch.
The Ministry of Health said these MIQs had strengthened procedures and protocols to ensure the risk to others in the group and in the facilities is reduced.
A number of mariners were not able to board flights to New Zealand after testing positive during newly-introduced pre-departure testing, it said.
When will life return to normal?
A vaccinologist has made her prediction on when New Zealand’s borders could open again.
Dr Helen Petousis-Harris, an associate professor at Auckland University, said two things needed to happen before the country could travel freely overseas again, or welcome travellers here.
“One, generate immunity in most of our population and two, beat the pandemic back in other countries.
“It is likely we will start vaccinating against Covid-19 here in NZ after March.”
There must be a great enough production of vaccine doses, and the resources to deliver them.
Vaccines must also be deployed in low and middle-income countries as thoroughly as they are in high-income countries, she said.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.