There are 11 new cases of Covid-19 in the community today (Friday) - all in Auckland.
Two of these cases remain unlinked.
The total number of cases in this outbreak is 1,007. Of these, 549 have recovered.
Director of Public Health Caroline McElnay said New Zealand is closing in on the outbreak and there is reason to be "cautiously optimistic".
She said further places of interest in the Waikato will be put online, related to the truck driver with Covid-19 who travelled between Auckland, the Bay of Plenty and the Waikato.
She said the supermarkets he visited in these places aren't locations of interest, because the truck driver had contact with staff at delivery areas, not the general public.
Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson said the trans-Tasman bubble pause will be extended for another two months until mid to late-November.
The pause was due to end on September 24.
A third 'red flight' for New Zealanders stranded in Australia will be put on.
Robertson said Treasury estimated that having Auckland at Level 4 and the rest of New Zealand at Delta Level 2 costs the economy $700 million a week.
Should Auckland move to Level 3 next week, as Cabinet has decided 'in-principle', the cost to the economy is expected to be $260 million a week.
Robertson reiterated that if Auckland moves to Level 3, the people limit at venues throughout the rest of New Zealand is expected to be lifted from 50 to 100.
Cabinet will make a decision on alert levels on Monday.
Here's the latest from the Ministry of Health:
| Cases | |
| Number of new community cases | 11 |
| Number of new cases identified at the border | Five |
| Location of new cases | Auckland |
| Location of community cases (total) | Auckland 990 (535 of whom have recovered); Wellington 17 (15 of whom have recovered) |
| Number of community cases (total) | 1,007 (in current community outbreak) |
| Cases infectious in the community * | Nine (60%) of yesterday’s 15 cases have exposure events |
| Cases in isolation throughout the period they were infectious * | Six (40%) of yesterday’s 15 cases |
| Cases epidemiologically linked | Nine of today’s cases |
| Cases to be epidemiologically linked | Two of today’s cases |
| Cases epidemiologically linked (total) | 973 (in current cluster) (13 in past 14 days unlinked) |
| Number of sub-clusters | Nine epidemiologically linked subclusters. The three largest subclusters are the Māngere church group: 384; and Birkdale social network cluster: 79; secondary community transmission associated with the Māngere church group 164. And ten epidemiologically unlinked subclusters. |
| Cases in hospital | 14 (total): North Shore (2); Middlemore (8); Auckland (4) |
| Cases in ICU or HDU | Three |
| Confirmed cases (total) | 3,658 since pandemic began |
| Historical cases, since 1 Jan 2021 (total) | 149 out of 1,840 since 1 Jan 2021 |
| Contacts | |
| Number of active contacts being managed (total): | 1064 |
| Percentage who have received an outbound call from contact tracers (to confirm testing and isolation requirements) | 94% |
| Percentage with at least one test result | 88% |
| Locations of interest | |
| Locations of interest (total) | 135 (as at 10am 17 September) |
| Tests | |
| Number of tests (total) | 3,206,325 |
| Number of tests total (last 24 hours) | 15,419 |
| Tests in Auckland (last 24 hours) | 7400 |
| Tests rolling average (last 7 days) | 13,177 |
| Testing centres in Auckland | 23 |
| Wastewater | |
| Wastewater detections | Auckland eastern suburbs (catchment includes Pakuranga, Shelley Park, Bucklands Beach) |
| COVID-19 vaccine update | |
| Vaccines administered to date (total) | 4,569,255; 1st doses: 3,015,345; 2nd doses: 1,553,910 |
| Vaccines administered yesterday (total) | 60,506; 1st doses: 36,666; 2nd doses: 23,840 |
| Māori | 1st doses: 282,828; 2nd doses: 135,945 |
| Pacific Peoples | 1st doses: 182,388; 2nd doses: 93,880 |
| NZ COVID-19 tracer | |
| Registered users (total) | 3,224,773 |
| Poster scans (total) | 363,829,166 |
| Manual diary entries (total) | 16,437,191 |
| Poster scans in 24 hours to midday yesterday | 2,478,712 |
Here's a press release on the trans-Tasman bubble pause:
The suspension of quarantine-free travel (QFT) with Australia has been extended, given the current Delta outbreaks, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today.
“When QFT was established with Australia, both our countries had very few recent cases of COVID-19 community transmission, and a very similar elimination strategy. This has changed significantly leading to our decision to suspend QFT for a further eight weeks,” Chris Hipkins said.
“Uncontrolled community transmission is still occurring in Australia, with case numbers continuing to steadily increase in New South Wales, Victoria, and the Australian Capital Territory. A small number of cases also continue to appear intermittently in other states and territories. In New Zealand as well, we’re getting on top of an outbreak in Auckland.
“Protecting New Zealand from any possible further spread of the Delta variant of COVID-19 is our absolute priority. We have made great progress to contain our current outbreak and are working hard to ease restrictions next week. Reopening quarantine-free travel with Australia at this point could put those gains at risk.
“The decision is critical to provide clarity for people in Australia to make informed decisions about their ability to shelter in place in the longer-term or whether to seek return flights and book space in MIQ.
“One of the reasons we established QFT with Australia was because our countries share so many close connections, and I acknowledge that this further suspension will be disappointing for many people.
“We’re announcing the decision today so that people in Australia can participate in the MIQ room release on Monday for rooms in October and November. Travellers from Australia need to visit the MIQ website to find out how to participate. There will be a second room release later in the month.
“A third red flight from Australia to New Zealand is also planned for those in emergency situations. This follows the two red flights that returned stranded Kiwis home to New Zealand on 5 and 15 September.”
The costs of flights and MIQ will need to be covered by travellers, and a pre-departure test from an accredited laboratory, also at the traveller’s cost, will be required within 72 hours of travel.
“We will review this decision in mid to late November to give more time for our vaccination rates to climb higher. It will be heavily influenced by the policies we’re working on for the Reconnecting New Zealand strategy.
“This recognises that the QFT was established on the basis that there was little to no community transmission in Australia, and that future settings are likely to change,” Chris Hipkins said.
The start of a maritime QFT system with Australia will be paused and reconsidered in 2022.
QFT from Australia to New Zealand was suspended on Friday 23 July, and the suspension was due to end on 24 September.
Further information is available on the Unite Against COVID-19 website.
What you need to do before the 9am MIQ lobby starts is on the MIQ website.
57 Comments
that will piss everyone off outside auckland, they could enjoy level 1 again but the talk lately sounds so much like the NSW PM and makes me think they are giving up on zero cases in the auckland.
my question the truck driver was a contact of an existing case but was still working why was he not isolating? and what was the time line
The answer for anyone else wondering:
The truck driver and his wife had previously been tested for COVID and returned negative results. They then subsequently caught COVID and there are some locations of interest as a result of this period when they were infectious but did not know they had COVID. They then both went together to get tested as the woman had symptoms but the man did not. Both returned positive results. They are both now in quarantine.
Now now don't get personal. My point is level 3’s effectiveness depends on people following the rules. It is a high trust model. As apposed to level 4 which is more of an effective house arrest so much harder to break the rules even if you want to. Just an observation
Exactly right Donny, its pretty clear now that zero cases in the community is now not possible. A week or two of level 3 with people in Auckland treating it like Level 2 will see case number climb again. The only real question left now is do we slam Auckland back into level 4 or do we just give up trying to control Delta ? Clearly with Delta there are just to many people floating about who don't have any symptoms so you simply cannot contain this without everyone staying at home for 2 weeks with zero contact with the outside world and testing every single person in the country and thats simply not going to happen.
The sooner this government faces reality the better. Vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate!
Just in case you and some others here missed this article with very good info and a very qualified opinion on why vaccinations won't be the salvation but rather a hindrance in future. Remember, we should follow the science...?
'Follow the science', the catch cry of the fear mongers!
CT
There you go again.
McGill University: "Bossche makes a number of incorrect or exaggerated claims".
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-critical-thinking-pseudoscie…
Or
He also pushes the much discredited Ivamectin argument. He states on his own page that it "seems like ivermectin would qualify"
https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/post/cautious-suggestions-on-a-way-o…
What took you so long… LOL.
Of course, unsurprisingly a typical hit piece. Funded by none other than Lorne M. Trottier, via
In November 2011 Trottier gave $5.5 million to make the Symposium permanent and to fund Joseph A. Schwarcz's McGill's Office for Science and Society to educate the public about quackery and to "battle against charlatans."
That not being sufficient to satisfy the good Mr Trottier, another organisation he helps finance is CFI… a very kind organisation as below illustrates!
In July 2018, CFI filed suit against CVS in the District of Columbia for consumer fraud over its sale and marketing of ineffective homeopathic medicine. The lawsuit in part accuses the country's largest drug retailer of deceiving consumers through its misrepresentation of homeopathy's safety and effectiveness, wasting customers’ money and putting their health at risk. Nicholas Little, CFI's Vice President and General Counsel said, "CVS is taking cynical advantage of their customers’ confusion and trust in the CVS brand, and putting their health at risk to make a profit and they can't claim ignorance. If the people in charge of the country's largest pharmacy don't know that homeopathy is bunk, they should be kept as far away from the American healthcare system as possible."
You are most welcome to take the Pfizer vaccine as many times as you think it is needed for your personal situation. I really have no issues with anyone taking vaccines! I have an issue with being cajoled daily into taking it myself when I know it is not tested sufficiently in my opinion, and it is my right not to have to accept such pressure.
Perhaps most concerning is what kind of methods some people here suggest to try and alleviate their fears by mandating mass vaccinations without regards for personal civil liberties or risk aspects of known side effects! Is that basic concept really so hard to understand?
Apparently it is. You don't seem to grasp civil liberties or science that great.
Up next, "free" speech doesn't mean you get to say what you want with impunity.
You want your own rules, buy an island or live in the woods. You want the safety, security and benefits of modern society, there's rules to follow son.
Misinformation.This self appointed expert is a vet full of pseudoscience which sort of sounds persuasive
See below i
https://www.deplatformdisease.com/blog/addressing-geert-vanden-bossches…
Hi Kiwichas - I've read the article you shared, and I'm not convinced. It's well written with a lot of references and goes into detail. You really have to dig deep and it would take hours to pull apart each thread, but here's an example of one of the flaws that jumped out at me. The author Nirenberg states
"Evidence has already confirmed that antibodies against B.1.351 cross-neutralize with ancestral variants. Pfizer and Novavax are also working on updated vaccines against the variants of concern in case they may be needed..."
Sounds reasonable and here's the reference that he links to back up that claim
to https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.06.434193v2.full.pdf
However in a more recent science article it's been shown that Pfizer vaccine generated antibodies are totally ineffective against the B.1.351 variant with very poor neutralizing antibody titers IC50 > 10,000 ng/mL (see Figure 2 table C) https://www.science.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/science.abh1766
When Nirenberg states that they're working on updated vaccines I think that's the problem. Original antigenic sin would have kicked in and everyone with a first gen vaccine will have their B-cells making antibodies programmed to recognise epitopes on the first gen spike protein.
Hard going reading that, but I think he is saying natural immunity from catching the disease is far superior to immunity from getting jabbed. Natural immunity will see covid die out, vaxxing will only make it meaner. Is that actually true?...cause I am sceptical of anything I read on covid.
There has been some evidence that natural immunity is better, particularly over longer time frames, which is why there's this discussion around boosters for the vaccines since they don't seem to be as effective over the longer term. Of course acquiring 'natural' (really, virus induced) immunity requires you to be infected with a virus capable of causing severe illness and death, which is significantly less likely to be the case from vaccine induced immunity.
I've seen some stuff indicating that natural infection + vaccination is best. This isn't a topic I haven't spent much time investigating since natural infection in NZ has not really been a concern, and the obvious best course of action is to get a vaccine if you can. And if you catch COVID after you've been vaccinated then at least you have the best protection you can, and if your immunity is better afterwards, so much the better.
Also at this might focus minds around here a bit, here's a first hand account of COVID from an acquaintance I have in the US:
I was perfectly healthy before I caught covid. I got it back in November 2020, my symptoms were pretty mild but I wouldn't wish them on anyone. It took me 3 weeks before I started feeling better. I was pretty tired most of the time. At some point during the first 3 weeks I lost my taste and didn't recover it until February. It's incredibly weird when the stuff you eat has the right texture but no taste. Even after that, I had neurological damage with my taste buds. I ate spaghetti at some point and then for a good 2 weeks everything tasted like spaghetti (maybe you think that tastes good, but it's not when everything has the same taste). I used to like Cheerios but now it taste wrong, nothing like I remember it tasting. Other cereals seem ok. I get brain fog from time to time which didn't used to happen before, those days I can barely get any work done.
Many people have COVID and it's just like a cold. For others, it can be very nasty, even if they aren't landed in hospital.
Get vaccinated.
Sounds much like my experience with a "mild" case of the Wuhan virus.
Once you get through the first few days of severe aches and fevers the extreme fatigue is what really gets you for the next couple of weeks. Blood ferritin levels through the roof.
Completely losing your sense of smell and taste is a very strange experience especially at mealtimes. It also took months for my sense of smell to come back properly.
The great news is, according to my friends overseas who have caught it since being vaccinated, the "mild" symptoms above still happened to them and it was less than pleasant. So, even if you are vaccinated it's probable that you'll get to experience the "fun" sooner or later.
Blood test, Ferritin is a measure mainly for iron levels, but is often severely elevated in various infections giving a false high reading if you are actually interested in the possibilities of iron overload or deficiency.Not sure why it was measured though in the first place.
Sounds like BL was pretty crook.
Good news is that it looks as though longer lasting immunity comes with getting your Pfizer after the Covid (but you have to survive first) and that BL is well and able to relate the episode well enough to put people off trying the natural way first.
I suppose that's how rabbits developed immunity to Myxomatosis, all the susceptible ones died and those that were resistant passed on their resistance genes to their offspring, resulting in a resistant population. Personally I would rather have the Covid vaccine than find out if I am one of the lucky Rabbits.
It's impossible to eliminate. Hasn't been eliminated anywhere else in the world. And unless we want to isolate from the rest of the world forever, elimination is a fools errand.
Protect the vulnerable, and the rest of us just have to suck it up and get on with it.
Look forward to annual Covid jabs covering a few the worst contemporary variants, much like the flu vaccine.
I generally agree, however trust we're not confusing elimination with eradication. By (temporary) elimination - although some very good opportunities do appear to have been squandered - we have had room to breathe and be better prepared for the future, whereas others have not.
Yep, Covid sure is coming no matter what we do, but better to delay and make the very best use of our time, whatever that might be, before grim reality comes knocking. That's a lesson I have learned the hard way, a few times.
The virus is likely to be evolve to be less dangerous over time, and people will build up resistance to it, even if they don't get vaccinated regularly; that's the case with influenza amongst humans, and why most people in this country don't get a flu vaccine each year. Flu generally isn't as infectious as delta, but then it also doesn't have the whole-body damaging symptoms like COVID does (affecting lungs permanently, and almost all organs in the body).
But another possible future is that rapid and accurate tests for COVID become available along with effective treatments. So it may be that you can go to the doctor and get a test while you wait. Comes back positive, and you're given a nasal spray (or even better, pills), told to go home and take the treatment and isolate for 5 days until you're all better.
Not at nearly the same rate as it does amongst people with COVID and long COVID, no. Pretty uncommon for people to lose taste and smell with influenza, whereas it's common for people to lose it, even for months, with COVID.
Some estimates put long COVID as high as 15-20% of people who get COVID; I've even seen estimates of up to 60-70% (which clearly sounds like bullshit on the face of it, or a very loose definition of 'long COVID').
Flu generally isn't as infectious as delta, but then it also doesn't have the whole-body damaging symptoms like COVID does (affecting lungs permanently, and almost all organs in the body).
Absolutely not true! A real case of the flu - I say that because many think they’ve had flu, but they haven’t - can be devastating at the time and create real long term problems.
No, it's not. It's just a virus, albeit a quite infectious one. China has had success eliminating Delta in many cities and Queensland looking good. Vic and NSW lockdowns are barely our level 3 so not surprising didn't eliminate it. While I agree long term we can't keep this up, a few more weeks and we'll have this thing eliminated if people just stay the course. I'm personally really frustrated by all the negativity and pessimism. And once that's done we can go back to our nice life at L1, which basically nowhere else in the world has enjoyed. Don't eliminate it and exponential growth will kick in and we'll have to have months of L2 at least. Why can't some people see that?
$700,000,000 a week. Let that sink in. That's approximately 4% of the annual cost of the entire NZ health system being pissed down the drain EVERY WEEK.
Sure, but it helps to understand who is paying this $700m. Because it isn't the government. It's also not actually money spent, but rather money unearned. Also as we saw last year, economic activity is likely to rebound after lockdown, making back a lot of those losses - although service/experienced based industries like hospitality mostly won't make it back.
And the alternative, where we let COVID run amok and don't eliminate it, is actual economic losses without the rebound, and people sick and dead.
It's not a case of "lockdown = economy struggles, no lockdown = no struggles". The economy is going to struggle either way. Evidence shows that it struggles less, in the medium term, with a lockdown.
Level 2D for all NZ for school holidays? Minister of Education 'Keeping the holidays as they are will avoid disrupting the plans already in place for students, families and educators, including curriculum and activity planning and families planning their holidays, and will reduce anxiety.'
I wish I'd spent the last 5 weeks doing something productive while stuck at home - like recovering from Covid. It would have been a perfect time to get it. Then get the vaccine. My family would have had great immunity. Alas, it will have to be saved for another time now.
I agreed with all the initial lockdowns but lets get some facts straight here. The Labout government had 18 months to build a better MIQ facility that wasn't slap bang in the middle of the CBD and to begin to ramp up the capacity in the healthcare system and they did NOTHING. The lockdowns are now a pointless exercise, the government let it in. I feel sorry for anyone with kids, they are going to be paying for this mess for the whole of their lives. I don't think the average person realises what a long term mess this has created but I'm pretty sure the light bulbs going to come on in even the dimmest of them when it starts hitting them in the pocket.
We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment.
Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.