The Ministry of Health is reporting 13 new Covid cases, all in Auckland. Meanwhile, 250,000 extra doses of Pfizer vaccine are literally on the way to Auckland and due to arrive on Friday.
The latest case numbers are down from 15 on Wednesday.
It brings the total in this outbreak to 868. Of these, 256 people have now recovered.
There's 31 people in hospital, all in Auckland, with five in ICU and three of them requiring ventilation.
Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said there were 30 unlinked cases in the outbreak, though these included very recently reported cases.
Of the 15 cases reported on Wednesday, six had been infectious in the community.
In relation to the case of the patient in Middlemore Hospital found over the weekend to have Covid, Bloomfield said 124 patients and 29 staff had now been tested and all returned negative results.
The Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the extra Pfizer doses would enable the country to keep up with the current rate of vaccination till the big shipments due for October arrive. Another announcement is expected next week about a further deal for more vaccines from another country.
There were just under 67,000 doses given on Wednesday.
This is the vaccine announcement:
More than a quarter of a million additional doses of the Pfizer vaccine are on their way from Spain to New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced today.
The additional doses will arrive in Auckland on Friday morning to help meet the current surge in demand for vaccination.
“It’s been heartening to see so many New Zealanders getting vaccinated recently and the additional doses that we have purchased from Spain will help us provide additional capacity and walk-in sites through September,” Jacinda Ardern said.
“We’re vaccinating well ahead of plan and these additional vaccines will ensure we can continue to ramp up our vaccination programme.
“The Spanish shipment is in addition to New Zealand’s regular weekly delivery from Pfizer which is also expected this weekend.
“We expect to receive a total of 1.8 million doses from Pfizer throughout the month of September, in addition to the doses purchased from Spain. This means we don’t have any plans to slow down the rollout.
“This is the result of excellent collaboration between officials from New Zealand, Spain, the European Commission and Pfizer to secure this agreement. I wish to say thank you to those involved especially President Pedro Sánchez of Spain.
“We are deeply grateful to Spain for their cooperation and agreement to sell these doses to New Zealand. This reaffirms the strong links between our countries and is in the spirit of the global values shared by New Zealand and Spain.
“We also wish to extend our appreciation to the European Commission, for coordinating this purchase and to Belgium for their important role in producing the vaccines that New Zealand is the recipient of.
“We expect to make a further announcement about an agreement to buy additional Pfizer vaccines from a second country next week,” Jacinda Ardern said.
This is the detailed update from the Ministry of Health:
Cases |
|
| Number of new community cases | 13 * |
| Number of new cases identified at the border | Five (two plus three historical) |
| Location of new cases | Auckland |
| Location of community cases (total) | Auckland 851 (256 of whom have recovered); Wellington 17 (nine of whom have recovered) |
| Number of community cases (total) | 868 (in current community outbreak) |
| Cases infectious in the community | Six (40%) of yesterday’s 15 cases have exposure events |
| Cases in isolation throughout the period they were infected | Nine (60%) of yesterday’s 15 cases |
| Cases epidemiologically linked | Seven of today’s cases |
| Cases to be epidemiologically linked | Six of today’s cases |
| Cases epidemiologically linked (total) | 838 (in current cluster) (30 unlinked) |
| Number of sub-clusters | Eight epidemiologically linked subclusters. The two largest subclusters are the Mangere church group: 374; and Birkdale social network cluster: 76. There are nine epidemiologically unlinked subclusters. |
| Cases in hospital | 31 (total): North Shore (6); Auckland (13); Middlemore (12) |
| Cases in ICU or HDU | Five |
| Confirmed cases (total) | 3,491 since pandemic began |
| Historical cases, since 1 Jan 2021 (total) | 134 out of 1,673 since 1 Jan 2021 ** |
| Contacts | |
| Number of contacts identified (total) | 38,126 |
| Percentage who have received outbound call from contact tracers (to confirm testing and isolation requirements) | 87% |
| Percentage with at least one test result | 92% |
| Locations of interest | |
| Locations of interest (total) | 122 (as at 10am 5 September) |
| Tests | |
| Number of tests (total) | 3,100,261 |
| Number of tests total (last 24 hours) | 17,684 |
| Tests rolling average (last 7 days) | 10,856 |
| Tests in Auckland (last 24 hours) | 8,472 |
| Testing centres in Auckland | 22 |
| Wastewater | |
| Wastewater detections | No unexpected detections in past 24 hours |
| COVID-19 vaccine update | |
| Vaccines administered to date (total) | 4,100,658; 1st doses: 2,711,485; 2nd doses: 1,389,172 |
| Vaccines administered yesterday (total) | 66,935; 1st doses: 48,491; 2nd doses: 18,444 |
| Mâori | 1st doses: 250,521; 2nd doses: 122,266 |
| Pacific Peoples | 1st doses: 159,836; 2nd doses: 83,252 |
| NZ COVID-19 tracer | |
| Registered users (total) | 3,183,822 |
| Poster scans (total) | 344,396,830 |
| Manual diary entries (total) | 15,772,051 |
| Poster scans in 24 hours to midday yesterday | 1,624,160 |
New cases identified at the border
| Arrival date | From | Via | Positive test day/reason | Managed isolation/quarantine location |
| 4 September | United Arab Emirates | Direct | Day 3 / routine | Auckland |
| 6 September | Full travel history to be determined | Full travel history to be determined | Day 0 / routine | Auckland |
Historical cases identified at the border
| Arrival date | From | Via | Positive test day/reason | Managed isolation/quarantine location |
| 25 August | South Africa | Qatar and Australia | Day 3 / routine | Auckland |
| 2 September | Sri Lanka | Qatar and Australia | Day 1 / routine | Auckland |
| 2 September | Qatar | Direct | Day 0 / routine | Auckland |
*Today’s community case total includes a case we reported on Tuesday as one that was yet to be classified. It has now been classified as a community case.
**There’s a total of four historical cases to report today – the fourth is a previously reported community case which has been reclassified.
109 Comments
Firstly it wasn't "six wandering around yesterday", it was six of the new cases reported yesterday had been in the community while infectious. The timeline is that test results typically come back overnight, so these people were likely tested at some point on Tuesday and thus should have been isolating yesterday. Typically the 'exposure events' are from 2-3 days before someone gets tested.
Secondly they didn't necessarily know they were contacts at the time they were in the community and infected.
There's a difference between not knowing you're a contact and going about your life, and knowing you're a contact and deliberately flouting isolation requirements.
Yip. Ideally the number would be 0. But being non-0 doesn't mean that anyone will have been infected from the cases. Depends how infectious they were, whether they were vaccinated, whether they were wearing a mask, where they actually went, how many people could have crossed paths with them.
Dr Bloomfield is clearly more worried about potential "undetected chains of transmission" than he is about these low number of people who are known to have been infectious while in the community, because we know about them we can find out their movements and try to contact trace people they may have crossed paths with.
Yup, and the smaller the numbers get, the better chance the expanded contact tracers have of getting around it. I think we're in a really good place for Auckland to L3 but I don't think we'll see Level 2 as we know it in Auckland - I can see us moving to 2.5 in a couple of weeks, with bigger restrictions on workplaces and indoor/event spaces but allowing families to mix again.
So much emotional black mail & spin in the conferences. Today's episode talking about babies (1 in hospital) and trying to guilt trip people into getting the vaccine. If they're going down this track, can they educate and warn everyone around RSV and the implications it's had on babies...
NZ would typically lose 500 every year to the flu. We are only losing nett new people once we are over this number. Currently a 90yr old who was on her last legs anyway makes front page news, while someone else dies of cancer and no one cases.
The very interesting stat is the All Cause Mortality metric which is significantly up on our recent and long term average. Cindy can't lie her way around those numbers.
Not sure where you get that info from. Try here: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-trac…
Looks to me like fewer deaths overall in NZ.
Currently a 90yr old who was on her last legs anyway makes front page news, while someone else dies of cancer and no one cases.
It's news because it's a rare death from a new disease.
I'm sure if we had dozens or hundreds of deaths from COVID, as some people around these parts are indicating we should do by learning to "live" with COVID and prematurely opening our borders before we have sufficient vaccine penetration, then each death wouldn't be news.
It's like when people die from Ebola that is news, but people dying from cancer isn't, because cancer literally isn't news.
what about those that can be prevented with no medical intervention?
Safety Report #25 – 21 August 2021 (medsafe.govt.nz)
Up to and including 21 August 2021, a total of 37 deaths were reported to CARM after the administration of the Comirnaty vaccine. Following medical assessments by CARM and Medsafe it has been determined that:
- 19 of these deaths are unlikely related to the COVID-19 vaccine
- 5 deaths could not be assessed due to insufficient information
- 12 cases are still under investigation.
- 1 death was likely due to vaccine induced myocarditis (awaiting Coroner’s determination)
Does anyone know if those determinations are open to verification by anyone medically qualified but outside of Medsafe?
A curious mind would ask if an organisation that is tasked with approving vaccines and is then the right medical body to then also investigate and assess the causes of any issues. Am I the only one seeing the irony in this potential incentive to ensure your previous decisions don't look too bad and defendable?
The pivot away from fear and lockdowns but don't worry its coming from Jacinda pretty soon. The narrative that we are out of the woods and what a great job we have all done is coming soon from a soapbox near you. As soon as the vaccination rates are high enough its will be an open door policy, there is no other choice in reality we cannot carry on like we have been for years and years. There will be ongoing booster shots, new versions of the vaccine, new variants popping up and new vaccinations for those. The lab in Wuhan opened Pandora's box.
But is moving away from fear and lockdowns realistic?
I've been reading a bit about NSWs plans for opening up and it sounds pretty similar to our level 2 - caps on numbers at venues, some degree of mask mandate etc.
Why is level 2 in perpetuity a better option than a month of level 4 followed by permanent level 1(assuming we tighten up the holes in MIQ).
The alternative to perpetual level 2 seems to be the health system getting over run as seems to be the case in Singapore despite their high vax rate.
Yes of course its realistic, sooner or later it comes down to math. England has just fully opened and has 200 people a day still dying but as you cannot die twice the number of deaths will decrease. The virus will simply weed out the weaker individuals and life will go on. Ongoing lockdowns post high vaccination rates cannot be justified, so we may get a few hundred more deaths a year from it, but we lose that many to road crashes every year and nobody bats an eye. The deaths from Covid will eventually drop into the noise of other flu related deaths each year. The best case outcome is that its just added to the standard flu shot that comes out once a year. We simply have to move on from Covid starting early next year.
What is relevant is that 94% or so of hospital admissions have been unvaccinated. That info took a bit of digging out and some political spin is at play on those figures. But leaving that aside it is something of an obvious pointer is it not, that vaccination is the only bet in town for NZ hereon in. Actually folks, it always was wasn’t it.
When was this? Is this double vaxed?
I would guess comes around 60-80% percent effectiveness (similar to Israel's). I would think we can use the "Pacific Peoples" vaccination rate of 29% but then we have to account for the age demographics (cases and hospitalisation) which is very young for where we are up to with vaccinations. The majority of double vaxed are still in group 3. If the vast majority of these have only have their first shot well these are brilliant numbers.
Edit: don't read this there are better numbers from the article below.
Just paste it in and the scripts will do it for you if you leave it separate from every thing else (or there is a button now days):
https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/covid-19/covid-19-delta-outbreak-how-…
"...there were 855 cases so far in the outbreak: 702 were unvaccinated, 115 had had one dose, and 38 had had two doses. "
"...84 out of the 88 cases in hospital - or 95 per cent - had not had a single dose of the Pfizer vaccine more than two weeks before testing positive."
"She said two weeks after one jab, a person is about 77 per cent protected against serious disease from Delta. This jumped to the high 90s two weeks following a second dose.
But then very few will have been double vaxed 2 weeks prior to becoming a case. I think you would have to have been over 60-65 and there is very few cases in this age group. I don't think we have the data to calculate anything.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/450874/covid-19-in-nz-in-numbers
Correct, and you'll be interested to know why. They tried making one in the 1960s and it turned out that after a while, it made kids MORE susceptible to variants of RSV vs the original. So they decided it was better to just let the virus circulate.
God help us if the same thing happens with these covid vaccines.
ah yeah ... RSV ... what happened there again?
"New Zealand hospitals are experiencing the payoff of “immunity debt” created by Covid-19 lockdowns, with wards flooded by babies with a potentially-deadly respiratory virus, doctors have warned.
Wellington has 46 children currently hospitalised for respiratory illnesses including respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. A number are infants, and many are on oxygen. Other hospitals are also experiencing a rise in cases that are straining their resources – with some delaying surgeries or converting playrooms into clinical space. RSV is a common respiratory illness. In adults, it generally only produces very mild symptoms – but it can make young children extremely ill, or even be fatal. The size and seriousness of New Zealand’s outbreak is likely being fed by what some paediatric doctors have called an “immunity debt” – where people don’t develop immunity to other viruses suppressed by Covid lockdowns, causing cases to explode down the line."
Solve it - Stop spreading misinformation on RSV - there is no vaccine.
There is no vaccine against RSV. However, it remains important to get immunised for other vaccine preventable illnesses such as pertussis (whooping cough).
https://www.health.govt.nz/your-health/conditions-and-treatments/diseas…
Novavax have one (ResVax) in stage 3 trials: https://www.novavax.com/our-pipeline
Unfortunately the Covid-19 pandemic has sucked scientific resources from development. Like everyone else the industry has been set back by resource overburden, they now need a long period where research science is better funded to get back on track.
trying to guilt trip people into getting the vaccine
No guilt tripping required. It's a simple case of "if people who get vaccinated do get vaccinated, they will provide protection to those who can't". Simple, cold, logical, facts. No emotion involved in that statement.
If they're going down this track, can they educate and warn everyone around RSV and the implications it's had on babies...
They mentioned RSV.
What's the R0 of RSV? What's the case fatality rate? Who are the vulnerable populations? What treatments are available and how successful are they? How many people has RSV killed worldwide in the last 12 months?
Answer those questions and you might become enlightened about why the government does what it does.
"Nine people across the country have died after becoming infected with RSV this winter - including six in Auckland's central suburbs"
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/rsv-six-dead-in-auckland-as-covid-19-take…
"In the last five weeks, the number of reported RSV cases has spiked, dwarfing records from the last six years.
The outbreak had so far grown to 2543 cases nationwide – 735 of these were reported in the last week. To put this into perspective, the annual average during winter pre-Covid-19 was just 1743.
When compared to historical reports, this year’s outbreak was unprecedented. Data from the past week put the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection rate at 143 per 1 million people, and the peak may still be yet to come."
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/health/125733161/rsv-outbreak-very-sharp…
And yet it's nowhere near as bad as COVID.
The government addresses different things differently, based on the different needs for the different things they are addressing.
Do you really expect the government to treat things that are very different, exactly the same? That would be quite idiotic.
No where near as bad as covid? Are you talking about NZ? 9+ deaths of RSV this winter and thousands of cases...
There's no denying that RSV is overwhelming our hospitals and is spiking at record highs due to Covid 19 lockdowns.
If Jacindas going to talk about 1 baby in hospital with covid as a travesty, it seems perfectly reasonable she should talk about the many babies in hospital suffering of RSV as a result of the Covid 19 lockdowns...
But I guess you'd rather her comment about people having sex during hospital visits or your mate Hipkins having a laugh using a 'spread your legs' mug. Yeah, that seems like better use of time...
No where near as bad as covid?
Correct. Remember when I asked you to find out how many deaths there were worldwide from RSV in the last 12 months? There have been 4.55M deaths attributed to COVID-19 since the outbreak began, that's a little longer than 12 months but the point remains. If RSV was killing millions of people worldwide, we'd know about it.
Are you talking about NZ? 9+ deaths of RSV this winter and thousands of cases...
And we've had 27 deaths from COVID-19 in NZ and roughly the same number of cases as RSV. So COVID-19 appears to be about 2-3 times as deadly.
There's no denying that RSV is overwhelming our hospitals and is spiking at record highs due to Covid 19 lockdowns.
It's not overwhelming the hospitals. There are not RSV patients that haven't been admitted to hospitals. The lockdowns didn't themselves cause RSV infections. They pushed infections that would have happened in 2020 to instead happen in 2021.
If Jacindas going to talk about 1 baby in hospital with covid as a travesty
She didn't talk about it as a "travesty". I don't think you know what that word means.
it seems perfectly reasonable she should talk about the many babies in hospital suffering of RSV as a result of the Covid 19 lockdowns...
She has talked about them.
But I guess you'd rather her comment about people having sex during hospital visits
She answered the question a journalist asked. Why are you blaming her for that? They dealt with it as quickly as they reasonably could.
or your mate Hipkins having a laugh using a 'spread your legs' mug. Yeah, that seems like better use of time...
Wow, you really are a sour, humourless person, who apparently can't walk and chew gum at the same time.
I think you're suffering a case of Jacinda derangement syndrome.
It's not overwhelming the hospitals.
RSV outbreak: Virus ravaging infants still putting pressure on health system
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/health/125733064/rsv-outbreak-virus-rava…
RSV outbreak: Hospitals and GPs 'flat tack' as virus hits children across NZ
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/health/125688496/rsv-outbreak-hospitals-…
RSV virus outbreak: Four in Wellington's ICU, 34 in hospital The outbreak of respiratory illness shows no sign of slowing in the capital, with 34 children with RSV and respiratory-type illnesses in Wellington Regional Hospital on Tuesday
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/rsv-virus-outbreak-four-in-wellingtons-ic…
The above shows the impact RSV is having, its a massive health issue NZ is facing and it's getting worse by the day. This is a virus that is currently killing kiwis & putting them in hospital. Our ICU beds are being filled by RSV patients.
If you're concerned about covid you should be concerned about RSV.
its a massive health issue NZ is facing
Faced.
and it's getting worse by the day.
Was. It is now getting better by the day.
This is a virus that is currently killing kiwis & putting them in hospital.
Fewer and fewer kiwis are in hosptial with RSV every week.
Our ICU beds are being filled by RSV patients.
Were being filled.
If you're concerned about covid you should be concerned about RSV.
I was concerned.
Your links are from the start of July. That was 2 months ago. There are no more recent articles about hospitals being full of RSV patients because it's not happening now.
Bloomfield said in yesterday's 1pm press conference that the RSV situation peaked 6 weeks ago. You know what 'peaked' means, right? It means everything after the peak is on a downward trend.
I specifically said you ignored my second sentence because the second sentence is relevant to my first sentence. My definition of the hospitals being overwhelmed is when they are turning away patients with RSV because they have no room for any more, and people are having bad health outcomes as a result of being turned away.
None of the articles you provided said that.
But we know that COVID overseas, many people were turned away from hospital and died as a result.
You keep trying to pretend that RSV is as bad as COVID. It simply isn't, on any of the metrics I listed. That's why Jacinda is not giving RSV the same airtime she is giving to COVID.
When will our press seriously call her out on stuff --- teh great we are vaccinating faster than everyone else - because we were so late to the party everyone was drunk - and better still we have secured EARLY 250,000 additional vaccines -- EARLY ? WHO reports nearly 5 and 1/2 BIllion vaccines given globally-- we are hardly early to this party !
sorry but mainly patsy questions from teh media - who if they ask a real one get dismissed with a thats not my understanding a toss of the head and a move across the room to a more friendly journalist ---and a completely innafectual opposition more interested in starting a race war or something else than actually asking constructive and challenging questions -- and now with the 1pm party political broadcast back no air time
Are you paid by the hour or by the number of posts defending this government? Seems to me that nobody posting here can be critical of anything related to covid, the government or both combined, without you going to extraordinary lengths to reply and defend this government’s actions or strategy.
I knew today’s 1pm briefing would be a good news story when I heard Jacinda would be fronting it and sure enough she’s managed to secure more vaccine from Spain.
She only fronts when there’s an alert level change or good news otherwise it’s left to Hipkins to deliver bad news or the usual daily updates.
That’s fairly understandable. Play to your strengths. Our PM graduated as a communications student and we have ourselves here a communications PM, semaphores and all, with PR added for good measure. That’s half of it at least for sure. What exactly the other half is, is hard to tell in my opinion.
If a politician didn't play to their strengths I imagine they would get criticized for that too. I was watching an old YouTube video earlier today and they were talking about President Ford and said that he was not a man of the times, in fact he seemed a century out of place. It made me think that to be a leader you need to be 'of the times' and a 'communications' person is obviously what the people want right now.
Sure it takes all sorts doesn’t it. For instance President Coolidge was the complete opposite but not unpopular either. Once Dorothy Parker was seated beside at a formal dinner. She remarked something like “my friends have bet me I won’t get more than three words out of you”Coolidge turned to her and said “you lose.”
It is going to be interesting watching how ventilators will be allocated to the explosion of covid cases that will occur when we open up the border. One line of thought is that it will be a very ruthless triage situation and those who have been vaccinated will be assessed as having a far higher probability of recovering, so are more likely to be allocated a ventilator than an un vaccinated patient.
Chickens roosting?
I tell you what I am doing now. I signed the support declaration of the nz doctors sos website. And I am also actively educating myself in the various treatments in varying stages of covid. In addition, I educate myself as much as I can as to why we might not yet have them approved for use in those cases where those cheap and well established drugs may help avoid the need of a ventilator in the first place. I also had a full checkup and had zero results with any concerns raised by my GP 2 months ago. So some people are not buying the hysteria and blackmail to get vaccinated. My last point is simple, we have a human rights commission who still remembers why it exist, and it gave some pertinent advice recently, thank you.
When I signed the support declaration about 3 weeks ago, it was well under 10,000 supporters! This government may find that there is fast growing number of people who can think for themselves and will not follow like sheep.
they are factual wrong, the vaccine is FDA approved, it has been tested for ten years it was being developed for a range of other virus and they pivoted also the testing now has the greatest sample any drug in the history of mankind has ever had with billions of does administered and effects monitored
the drugs they have quoted as helping have in the real settings be ineffective against Covid
and last they did not put their names front and center on the page, in fact looks more like a scam
Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19 | FDA
Well good luck with that I hope that you don't regret it. Please acknowledge that you made your decisions knowingly and accept, without complaint, that the health system will not have the capacity to look after you adequately when we transition to living with covid
Do you then approve of my witholding future funding of that system via paying less tax? Considering that you want me to ‘opt out’ now explicitly, to forgo a ventilator should i require one against all expectations and precautionary steps taken? Would it not be great to run every aspect of the health system on that basis? We could make do with the current health system resources quite fine by applying such ‘innovative’ thinking in many other areas that tax the health system heavily?
To answer your question, yes, happy to acknowledge that. As long as you stand up and fight for doctors rights to question their own bodies about some of the decisions made by a very few at the top of medsafe and min of health? And as long as you support the basic human right to refuse a medical procedure and not being pressured to accept it via ‘no jab no job’ hysteria being spread by any government agency! Looking at Customs in particular!!
Almost by default, if you require a ventilator you are extremely unwell, vaccinated or unvaccinated. Allocating probabilities on which individual may survive may not be so straightforward. Whether the 85 year old fully vaccinated patient with multiple underlying conditions deserves to be intubated ahead of an unvaccinated 20 year old with no other underlying health issues poses many questions. Given the government is spending money freely, perhaps the chronic lack of ICU beds should be addressed first .
Given the government is spending money freely, perhaps the chronic lack of ICU beds should be addressed first .
It is being addressed. The problem is you need trained medical staff to monitor and operate each ICU bed, and you can't just buy them from a medical device manufacturer.
We did at a Conference. He was surprised he wasn’t well received. He doesn’t have a clue, much like most of the Labour Caucus outside Ardern, Robertson, and Hipkins. We also tried to speak with Fa’afoi to address the number of skilled experts leaving the country due to Immigration’s stupidity, but he’s always out for lunch.
Of course decisions will be made on purely medical criteria without any reference to the merits of any moral considerations as they always have been. The point is that sadly the prognosis for un vaccinated people is far more poor and scarce resources will be allocated where there is the greatest probability of success.
Whether, left right or centre the fact is that the people of New Zealand have been sufficiently compliant, sensible and effective at making the lockdown work. As in Sydney it looks like it just took one Delta identity to come through the border. If New Zealanders had behaved in the manner of Sydneysiders, regardless of the relatively less stringent lockdown over there, ie beaches, parks and sports etc not to mention protests, New Zealand may now be much the same as Victoria if not NSW. The fact is when Delta arrived far too many New Zealanders were left unprotected by vaccination. This government owes the people of New Zealand quite some gratitude for their application and tolerance, which in effect, so far that is, has let them off the hook.
If I had to guess my attempt at a future prediction would be as soon as all the people want to be vaccinated have had that opportunity. Not sure what that number would be in NZ.
A few commenters on here talking about the abysmal capacity our hospitals have for any sort of outbreak, I think they have a point. For that reason I think the only humane option is to let everyone who wants to, get vaccinated regardless of what that number is. I still think it's going to be messy when we open up due to lack of hospital capacity. But if everyone's had a reasonable chance to protect themselves...
Depends on your definition of "let everyone who wants to, get vaccinated".
For example a lot of people simply don't have good transportation options. They may want the vaccine, but have no way to access it given the resources available at their disposal.
This would suggest that some sort of mobile vaccination service may be required, if the government is really dead-set on "as many people as possible" getting the vaccination. I think it's likely that they will in fact have mobile vaccination services early next year, at least in the main cities.
The easiest way to do this would have been to allow GP clinics to provide COVID vaccinations much earlier. There is a GP practice in Huntly that has 95% vaccination rates and they achieve this by having the nurses drive to homes to vaccinate. No need to spin up a separate apparatus when it already exists.
Yip, it seems the government did drop the ball on the GP front.
Also I wasn't necessarily suggesting setting up a separate apparatus, just saying that some sort of mobile distribution of vaccines that visits people in their own homes is likely going to be necessary. Not every GP practice, or probably even most, are going to be resourced or set up to do what you're suggesting.
This story makes no sense, why would we still need vaccines in October? By Governments own estimation the vaccine rollour would largely be done by October:
The 250,000 doses arrive tomorrow. There will be a larger shipment to arrive, presumably some time next week. The shipments together, alongside the 350,000 per week we're getting from Pfizer, will tide us over until October at our current vaccination rate of ~500,000 per week.
Myself and a lot of people I know are not due for our 2nd dose until mid to late November. Following the 12 week timeline between doses for maximum long term protection. Just have to hope we don't go full NSW before then.
I will also be waiting 12 weeks for maximum immunity for myself and my unborn kiddo.
I also only got my first vaccination a week or so ago because that's when I got out of my first trimester.
Consider myself pretty lucky to have this option available to me thanks to nz's elimination policy.
If all hell breaks loose before the end of November I will consider getting my second shot sooner.
Good article in the SF Chronicle looking at the Iceland and San Fran Delta spikes. Some good data here on the effectiveness of the vaccines on preventing hospitalization and deaths.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/What-Iceland-s-delta-surge-m…
Another patient at Middlemore Hospital has tested positive for Covid-19.The Ministry of Health tonight confirmed the person came to Middlemore's Emergency Department today.In a statement tonight, the ministry said Counties Manukau DHB's information was that the patient presented with a non Covid-related issue "and answered all screening questions in the negative, indicating their having had no exposure to Covid-19, no symptoms of Covid-19 nor having been at any location of interest"."The patient was assessed in the ED and spent a short amount of time in the Adult Short Stay ward before making the decision to self-discharge," the statement said.
why are they not treating everyone as if they had covid? how many staff are they going to stand down this time
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/126339918/covid19-p…
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