The World Health Organisation’s decision to remove covid-19 as a global health emergency is the right move, epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker says.

The organisation said the virus was now an established and ongoing health issue that no longer constituted a public health emergency of international concern.

Professor Baker said the global status change made sense at this stage, but it did not impact on whether covid-19 was still a pandemic.

Covid-19 was still New Zealand’s number one killer when it came to infectious disease and people should make sure they were vaccinated and take sensible precautions, he said.

“There might be some scaling down in the international reporting of cases, but really it doesn’t make a difference to somewhere like New Zealand.

“It makes no practical difference whatsoever to how countries manage this infection.”

1000 NZ deaths predicted this year
Professor Baker earlier said that this year covid-19 was on track to kill some 1000 people in New Zealand and hospitalise around 10,000.

The threat of long covid also loomed — with one recent study suggesting as many as one in five New Zealanders reported lingering symptoms after their first infection.

He emphasised the need for caution in easing our few remaining protections.

The latest vaccine was one of the best things people could do to guard against the disease, because it included protection against omicron — the current dominant variant circulating in the community.

“You have to always think why the World Health Organisation assigned it [a global health emergency originally] and it’s really related to these certain criteria.

“It is about how severe and how unexpected [the disease is], but it’s really about whether an international response is needed and whether there’s potential for international spread.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

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Epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker says Aotearoa New Zealand is experiencing its fourth wave of covid-19 infection and warns people to stay vigilant.

He said it was not as intense as the previous waves but it was definite, with a gradual rise in the number of self-reported cases every day, as seen in RNZ’s ongoing database of covid-19 information.

“It’s the first distinct rise, a sustained rise in cases this year.

“We’ve seen that numbers reached a low point in February and have been tracking up since then.”

The average number of daily cases sits at about 2000 at the moment, but Professor Baker said the actual number could be higher with people less inclined to test and report.

He said other indicators including the number of hospitalisations, people in intensive care units, deaths and traces of the virus in wastewater were also pointing to a new wave.

He encouraged people to get the new covid booster, isolate if they were infected, and mask up in poorly ventilated environments.

“It’s really important that everyone who has a position in authority thinks about the health of their workforce and their school population and the social venues that they operate in.”

Professor Baker also said that the Ministry of Education should provide monitors to reduce transmission in early childhood centres.

He also encouraged people to mask up on public transport.

“If you’re on a bus commuting … or train, you are going to be in that indoor environment for many hours every week and the ventilation is poor, so that would be a situation where I think masks should still be worn by everyone.”

Last week, cabinet decided to keep the few remaining covid-19 restrictions for at least the next two months.

Most pandemic rules have been scrapped, but people still have to self-isolate for seven days if they test positive, and masks must be worn in hospitals in some circumstances.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

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Covid-19 restrictions for all of New Zealand will ease from midnight tonight but a leading epidemiologist says the country is divided over its risk

From 11.59pm tonight, all of New Zealand moves into the orange traffic light setting, Covid-19 Reponse Minister Chris Hipkins announced today.

He said the change in alert levels was justified for several reasons, including an ongoing decline in cases.

He said case numbers now sit below 10,000 new cases per day for the first time since February 24, and that hospitalisations in Auckland were lower, with all three DHBs each reporting fewer than 100 patients for the first time since late February.

Epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker told RNZ Afternoons with Jesse Mulligan the move was reasonable for Auckland, which peaked almost six weeks ago.

“But that’s not the situation in the rest of New Zealand and particularly the South Island, even some DHBs in the North Island, like Northland and some of the others in the central North Island, are still seeing case numbers reported yesterday that were about 50 percent of their peak.

“So we are quite divided in terms of risk.”

Face masks out in schools
Under the orange setting, face masks are still required in some environments but not in schools.

Professor Baker said that with only 20 percent of younger students fully vaccinated, without masks there are not many barriers that stopped the virus circulating.

“And we do know anecdotally a lot of the way this virus is getting from one family to another is through transmission at school so this seems like a gap at the orange level.”

Hipkins said schools have been provided with guidance, and they have access to public health guidance so they can consider the advice for themselves.

“Ultimately looking at a school by school basis, in some schools there is still a very strong justification for masks — but not all.

“It is very challenging for schools, it has proven to be one of the most challenging covid-19 requirements.”

People who are young, healthy, fully vaccinated and boosted should be getting out much more because the risk from the infection is much less, Professor Baker said.

High vaccine coverage
“We know now of high vaccine coverage, we’ve actually pushed the fatality rate from this infection now to down to less than, it’s about 0.05 percent which is in a similar range now to seasonal flu — but it’s only because we’re highly vaccinated.”

Prior to vaccination there was a fatality risk of 0.5 percent, he said.

Te Pūnaha Matatini modeller Professor Michael Plank said: “It’s a good time to be relaxing the traffic light settings when cases and hospitalisations are declining in almost all parts of the country.”

Professor Plank is partly funded by the Department of Prime Minister and cabinet for research on mathematical modelling of covid-19.

“We have successfully flattened the curve of this Omicron wave — although hospitalisations and staff absences have put intense strain on our healthcare system, things would have been even worse without our efforts to slow the spread.”

While New Zealand is marking the end of its omicron sprint, it is at the beginning of its marathon, Professor Baker said.

“Covid-19 isn’t going to go away and we are very likely to have further waves of infection as immunity wanes, people’s behaviour gets back to normal, and new variants arrive,” he said.

“As we move away from restrictions and mandates, we need to work on a long-term, sustainable set of mitigations. This should include vaccines, high-quality surveillance systems, a focus on clean air indoors, and financial support for people to isolate when sick.”

Hybrid office/home set-up
With a change in restrictions, Victoria University of Wellington and Umbrella Wellbeing clinical psychologist Dr Dougal Sutherland says the government will no longer encourage working from home.

But Dr Sutherland warned there may be psychological consequences for workplaces encouraging their people to return in person.

Flexibility and agility will be key for adjusting to this new normal, he said.

“It seems likely many people will continue working from home, at least some of the time.

“This presents a challenge to organisations about how they create psychologically safe teams in a dispersed environment. There is also the challenge of how to support people with different levels of anxiety associated with increased human contact.

“Research shows that allowing people to work from home a few days a week is associated with better wellbeing and productivity, so allowing workers to continue a hybrid office/home set-up should be encouraged.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

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A public health expert says New Zealand’s covid-19 response is still one of the best in the world, two years after the first case was discovered here.

Two years ago today, the first case of the coronavirus was confirmed in New Zealand, in a recent returnee.

The entire country would go into lockdown for the first time less than a month later.

As New Zealand marks two years of living with covid-19, 14,633 new community cases of the virus were announced yesterday alone and a total of 56 people have died from it.

In a statement, the Ministry of Health said there were also 344 community cases of the cases in hospital and five in ICU.

This was less than a record 14,941 community cases reported yesterday.

Lowest death rate in OECD
Epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker of Otago University said this country still had the lowest death rate from covid-19 in the OECD by a large margin.

“The pandemic is now thought to have killed about 20 million people across the globe,” he said.

“And they’re mainly in countries where, obviously, they’ve had limited resources, or they’ve had very poor leadership from the governments.

“It’s interesting to see, in somewhere like Russia, the pandemic has now killed almost 0.8 percent of the entire population.”

The Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Centre reported 86,140 cases of covid-19 and 56 deaths today.

The centre reported more than 435 million cases of the virus and 5.9 million deaths globally.

Professor Baker said he was still optimistic about the future, highlighting that life expectancy in New Zealand had risen by about eight months over the course of the pandemic — one of the only countries in which this has happened.

Russian life expectancy dropped
By comparison, the life expectancy of Russian residents had dropped by about two years, he said.

“We haven’t seen those kinds of impacts since the Second World War.”

Professor Baker said the outbreak would peak over the next month before declining. He warned that New Zealand would see tens of thousands of new infections every day, and the total number of people with covid-19 was likely to be much higher than the number of people that get tested.

However, he said New Zealand had fared well compared to other countries.

“By delaying the arrival of the omicron variant, it’s given us a good opportunity to get highly vaccinated and boosted. And also, we have what is called peak immunity, because we’ve had our vaccine doses and boosters very recently and that means we’re ready to meet this virus with a lot of antibodies.”

The Ministry of Health said more than two thirds of eligible New Zealanders had now had their booster dose, with 28,836 people receiving their boosters on Saturday.

Four people were arrested at the Parliament grounds anti-covid public health protest overnight — two for breaking bail conditions, one for possessing an offensive weapon and one for trespass.

Police said the number of protesters had shrunk to about 200 people.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

University of Otago covid-19 experts are not immune to the increasingly vitriolic attacks dished out to scientists commenting on New Zealand’s pandemic response.

Among a litany of attacks University of Otago epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker has endured over the course of the pandemic, at the start of this week a caller told him he had “a target on his back”.

Professor Baker said he kept the caller on the line for about 20 minutes and asked him what that meant “in real terms”.

The caller was an anti-vaxxer who was accusing Professor Baker of propaganda on behalf of pharmaceutical companies, telling him vaccines were dangerous, especially so for children.

The caller had half-baked information gleaned from various sources that did not really make sense, Professor Baker said.

“He had these slogans he was throwing at me, but when I asked him what he meant he didn’t really have any answers.”

This week it was revealed University of Auckland professors Shaun Hendy and Siouxsie Wiles have argued to the Employment Relations Authority their employer was not doing enough to protect them as they shared their expertise with the public.

Professor would call police
But Professor Baker said he had not raised any concerns for his safety with his employer, the University of Otago.

If anyone made a threat where he felt he or his family was unsafe he would not hesitate to involve the police.

The Wellington-based scientist received the occasional phone call where a caller delivered a stream of abuse and hung up, but Professor Baker said he was most likely to receive abuse in the form of emails, averaging a few attacks by email every day.

As an exercise, Professor Baker began classifying the forms of abuse he received into “five categories of insult”, he said.

There were the incoherent streams of abuse, which were easily dealt with, he said.

Some people had major grievances but did not know where to go, and contacted him to vent and, in some extremely sad cases, he would reply and express sorrow and sympathy.

There were anti-vax propagandists whose positions were not based on facts, which he ignored.

There were those with ideological stances who disapproved of the government’s overall strategy, who at times delved into conspiracy theories.

Personal attacks stream
Finally, the group he found the hardest to deal with came as personal attacks from a small stream of people who persistently contacted him, and tried to undermine his ability to comment.

“Talking about how you look, or how you appear – they’re obviously making quite a concerted effort to look at where you might feel a bit vulnerable,” he said.

The attacks had never made him question his role of speaking publicly about the pandemic response, Professor Baker said.

University of Otago evolutionary virologist Dr Jemma Geoghegan said she, too, had not raised any concerns with her employer.

She said “no” to about 90 percent of media requests because the issues were not related to her field of expertise.

In limiting her media exposure, she had limited the number of people who wanted to harass her about her expertise, Dr Geoghegan said.

“I don’t generally speak about vaccines, so [that] abuse isn’t aimed at me,” the Dunedin scientist said.

‘Weirdly strong views’
However, she had published on covid-19 origins and people had “weirdly strong views about that”.

The issues dealt with by her Auckland counterparts were not surprising though and she had sympathy for them.

“This is happening all around the world,” Dr Geoghegan said.

“I’ve got international collaborators that … I think their mental health has suffered.

“Before covid, or at the start of covid, they were really prominent on Twitter and stuff like that, and now they’ve had to delete their accounts because of the amount of abuse they’ve got.”

Hamish MacLean is an Otago Daily Times journalist. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ and this story first appeared in the Otago Daily Times

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“We hear a lot of anecdotal reports of that. Also, the rules were relaxed a bit in terms of more social gathering outdoors and outdoor gatherings on the face of it should be relatively low risk because there’s better ventilation, but of course, it does provide more opportunities for mixing and they may turn into indoor parties and so on,” he told RNZ Checkpoint tonight.

“So I think we are seeing those effects.”

He said on the plus side, as the number of people vaccinated increased, the reproduction number would decrease.

Hurting Māori and Pasifika
However, the outbreak could still get out of control, hurting Māori and Pasifika in particular.

“The unvaccinated are increasingly Māori and Pacific people. So we do run the risk of this becoming a very unequal outbreak, and I think that’s a really critical factor that government needs to look at, at the moment.”

Professor Baker also said a level 4 lockdown may still be necessary, depending on the outbreak’s movement.

“I don’t think that we can rule out the need for some kind of circuit breaker lockdown in the future, but at the moment, it looks like the system is managing these numbers.”

He said if the country could reach 90 percent vaccination coverage, it would be reasonable to move to level 2.

He said Auckland’s border could be dropped by Christmas “potentially” if there was uniformly high vaccine coverage across Aotearoa.

“This is where I think we could definitely move down to alert level two, which actually puts very few barriers in the way of the virus, in practice, and in addition, we could have the schools open again.

“So I think that would be a good point to make that move.”

But it was critical that high vaccination coverage included Māori and Pasifika demographics, for dropping the border to be safe, he said.

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Northland will move to alert level 3 restrictions from 11:59pm tonight, New Zealand’s Covid-19 Response Minister has confirmed.

Minister Chris Hipkins held a briefing at Parliament on the situation in Northland this evening.

The new restrictions will remain in place until 11.59pm Tuesday and will be reviewed at Cabinet on Monday.

Hipkins said the move was necessary following new information on the risk presented by a positive case initially tested in Whangārei earlier this week and confirmed in Auckland yesterday. The woman was now in an Auckland managed isolation quarantine facility.

“Updated information provided by the police today shows the case moved extensively around Northland after travelling there on October 2,” Hipkins said.

He said it was believed she did not travel alone and travelled with another woman, who was not yet in MIQ.

“We believe this new information warrants an alert level change decision to keep Northland people safe,” he said.

“It has also been taken because the individual has not been cooperative with contact tracing efforts.”

He said the woman had not supplied the reason for being in Northland.

Watch the news briefing

Video: RNZ News

“It has been very difficult to get information about this particular case,” Hipkins said.

“The first test result we had was what you could describe as an indeterminate test result, so it was quite difficult to locate the person.

“The information that they supplied when they were tested the first time did not provide sufficent information to be able to contact them with the test result and get them back to be tested.

“It took some time to track them down, the police ultimately were able to assist there and did help to track the person down.”

Hipkins said he understood the woman obtained a document by providing false information to leave Auckland but this was yet to be verified. When it was discovered and revoked they were already in Auckland.

The first locations of interest for Northland have been added to the Ministry of Health’s website.

They include BP Connect Wylies petrol station and the Z Kensington service station in Whangārei.

Northland vaccination rates low
Hipkins said another factor taken into account was that vaccination rates in Northland were low compared to the national average.

“Without placing restrictions on movement there is a possibility that the virus could spread quite rapidly within the community.”

It is one of the least-vaccinated regions – just two thirds of residents have had their first Pfizer dose.

“Cases spreading at alert level 2 are a risk we cannot take, but it’s also further reason why we need to really focus on vaccinations,” said Hipkins. “Without high vaccination rates we will need to continue to use restrictions to stop the virus spreading.

“I have two things to ask of Northlanders. First, if you have any cold and flu like symptoms please come forward and get a test as soon as possible.”

“The second request that I have and I can’t stress this enough, is please get vaccinated. These cases do highlight the risk of Covid-19 to the unvaccinated anywhere in the country.

“Now is the time to be vaccinated.”

Northlanders ‘stay in bubble’
Hipkins reminded Northlanders that alert level 3 meant they had to stay in their bubble and stay at home.

“Don’t go and visit family, friends and neighbours, this is a virus that can spread quite quickly and that is part of the way it spreads.”

Speaking to RNZ Checkpoint after the announcement, Whangārei Mayor Sheryl Mai said she was “actually quite grumpy”.

“We’ve got a person who really has done everything that they should not do. And they’ve impacted on all of Northland as a result.

“I was giving the person the benefit of the doubt earlier today. Now I’m just ropeable.”

Epidemiologist Michael Baker said without full cooperation with contact tracers, public health staff are reliant on swabbing and wastewater results to track the virus’ spread.

Professor Baker said the Te Tai Tokerau situation was “really concerning” and the lockdown “had to be done”.

With Northland entering level 3, Auckland in a level 3 with benefits, and Waikato in level 3 restrictions, he told Checkpoint there needed to be clarity on what strategy New Zealand was pursuing against covid-19.

“We’ve actually had very confused messages this week about a number of things, including what comes after elimination, which we seem to be transitioning out of. That hasn’t been made clear,” he said.

“Also how are we going to use the alert level system? Because Auckland is using a stepped approach, they’re stepping up. The rest of the country’s got alert levels and is stepping down. There’s also a version of a traffic light system that’s been proposed circulating at the moment.

“So I think this week has really been quite poor for clarity of communication and coherence.

“The government really has to sort out where we’re going. And one of the approaches I think we should look at would actually be a regional approach.”

Professor Baker said suppression could be pursued in Auckland while an elimination strategy could work in the South Island.

There were 44 new cases of Covid-19 reported in the community today, including three in Waikato.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

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Papua New Guinea and Fiji are among several countries in the region going backwards in their fight against the covid-19 pandemic and this is concerning, a New Zealand epidemiologist has warned.

PNG has recorded more than 170 deaths and more than 17,000 cases of the virus. In Fiji, 17 people have died and more than 3,000 active cases are in isolation.

Professor Michael Baker, from the University of Otago, said the figures coming out of both countries are a concern.

“One of the added worries with PNG is it’s by far the largest population [9 million] and many people are living in informal settlements in crowded conditions with multi-generational families,” he said.

“They are very vulnerable to this infection so it’s very concerning. This is the same in Fiji.

“We are seeing a pattern across the Asia-Pacific region now where countries that have managed the pandemic extremely well and have succeeded in eliminating the virus. Fiji did extremely well and had no transmission for over a year.

“But now what we’re seeing is an outbreak of the more infectious Delta variant and we will see more infections of the virus unfortunately.”

Professor Baker said this had put a lot of strain on the health control measures in these countries, due to fatigue and complacency, after more than a year of battling the virus.

Fiji’s government has refused to impose a national lockdown with Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama saying this would cripple the economy and impact on Fijian jobs.

Fiji positivity rate at 7.4 percent
The country’s covid-19 positivity rate is now at 7.4 percent while the World Health Organisation (WHO) threshold is at five percent.

“That’s a grim situation and is very concerning,” Professor Baker said. “They are on that exponential part of the curve and that means essentially uncontrolled transmission of this virus and we know all the consequences that go with that.

“That also means with more positive cases will come deaths. Typically there’s a mortality risk depending on the ages of the population of half a percent to one percent.”

In PNG, where testing remains limited, the government has been reluctant to force wider communities into lockdowns and so instead has urged the public to adhere to the preventative measures of the “niupela pasin” or new normal.

With vaccine hesitancy still rife in PNG, health authorities there appear to be banking on the natural protection of a youthful population to mitigate some of the impacts of covid-19.

“But one of the real worries is that when you exceed the capacity of the health system to manage these ill people, they start dying from quite preventable causes. Some people are seriously ill and it will be hard to look after them even with the best intensive care.”

He said a change to policy settings is needed so people are more prepared for any outbreak.

Concern for Asia-Pacific region
“I’m concerned for the whole Asia-Pacific region because they are all going backwards at the moment and having trouble containing this variant [Delta]. Just look at the terrible situation in Fiji.

“This is a real lesson for us in New Zealand that everything we are doing now we are going to have to do better if we are going to stay ahead of this more infectious variant.”

Professor Baker’s number one piece of advice is to stay home if you have cold or flu symptoms and get tested. After that, wearing masks indoors at level two and compulsory scanning are critical.

There have been calls to ramp up covid-19 vaccinations on both sides of the Tasman.

An alert level 2 was raised in New Zealand last week after an Australian tourist who had visited tourist attractions, restaurants and bars in Wellington between June 18 and 21 tested positive for the Delta variant of the virus on his return home.

Wellington moves back down to alert level 1 from midnight Tuesday, and cabinet has agreed in principle to resume travel with some Australian states from Sunday: Victoria, South Australia, ACT and Tasmania.

The travel pause with NSW, Western Australia, Northern Territory and Queensland is set to continue beyond Sunday. Cabinet will review the settings for those states on Monday, July 5, and announce a decision on Tuesday, July 6.

Call to ramp up vaccinations
The Australia New Zealand Leadership Forum worked on protocols and advice for the governments on the trans-Tasman travel deal, with tourism worth more than NZ$5 billion to the two countries.

Co-chair of the forum, Ann Sherry, believes the attitude of some towards vaccination is putting everyone at risk.

She said both countries need to give their vaccination rollouts “some acceleration”, especially as Australia and New Zealand have countries nearby with connections.

“I watched imagery last night of fighting in Fiji over someone who’d stolen crops,” she said.

“Now when you get to the stage in your near neighbours where people are fighting over food because they’re so dependent on tourism — so dependent on both Australians and New Zealanders coming in and out, and them getting work in both Australia and New Zealand — can we really in good conscience sit by and watch that happen?

“There’s a bigger world around us. A lot of places very dependent on Australia and New Zealand in the region, and they’re doing it tough at the moment.

“Their economies are collapsing and that puts a lot of vulnerable people at risk. And I personally don’t think we should just sit by, watch that happen and say, ‘we’re okay, so see ya’.”

19,000 cases in French Polynesia
Meanwhile, French Polynesia’s covid-19 tally has breached the 19,000 cases mark after another nine infections were recorded over the weekend.

Daily infection numbers have, however, plummeted to single digits after peaking in November when French Polynesia had the fastest propagation rate of the pandemic outside Europe.

Six cases of the Delta variant were discovered last week and more than 60,000 people have been fully vaccinated.

Since last week, there is no curfew. Gatherings continue to be restricted to a maximum of 25 people and in enclosed spaces, masks have to be worn by people aged 11 and older .

The territory was reopened to quarantine-free travel for vaccinated visitors from the US last month.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

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The New Zealand government should impose a week-long home quarantine for returnees after they have left managed isolation facilities to reduce the risk of community spread, epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker says.

Three positive cases, a Northland woman and a father and daughter in Auckland, were detected this week after they had left their managed isolation facility – the Pullman Hotel in central Auckland.

The three people caught the virus from an infectious person staying at the same facility. The initial source was sent to a quarantine facility once they tested positive.

More than 36,000 tests have been completed in the last week, 22,000 of those in the community, since the positive cases were confirmed. No new cases have been identified.

University of Otago epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker told RNZ Morning Report this latest scare had renewed his concerns about New Zealand’s border protection process.

“Personally, I think we should be thinking about this whole four-week period that [returnees] have, the week before they get on the flight overseas, their two weeks in MIQ in New Zealand, and their week after they leave these facilities.

“Obviously we need to focus more on that whole journey, but I think the week after they leave MIQ… it’s a really good idea to think about requiring a week of home quarantine. If we look at what is done internationally, say Taiwan for example, has used that approach quite a lot and they really do enforce that period, people are required to stay at home, it’s followed up and there are huge fines if you don’t adhere to that requirement.”

Returnees stay in one place
While he admits there are practicality problems associated with that, Professor Baker said the main point was that returnees stayed in one place, reducing the risk of another scenario like the one this week.

“One of the really concerning numbers is the fact that we’ve increased by about threefold the number of positive being detected in our MIQ facilities over the last few months, this has just crept up steadily and it reflects the fact that the pandemic is getting much more intense overseas, and we’re seeing more transmissible variants.

“So I would say the [government’s] focus really needs to shift offshore and thinking about the ways we can reduce the number of infected people arriving here.”

Despite the scare, Professor Baker said he was confident widespread transmission had been avoided.

“This is not like the Auckland August outbreak, where we had unknown chains of transmission in the community, these are very clearly defined breaches of our MIQ system and we know who they are, their contacts have been followed up, so it’s a different situation.

“So I’m reasonably optimistic, but I guess we just have to see more results.”

Professor Baker said one reason why there had not been widespread transmission could be because only about one in five cases transmit it to other people.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

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