Vanuatu’s outgoing president, Obed Moses Tallis, has urged the government not to abolish the Ministry of Justice, warning against a “dictatorial system”.

His opening speech to Parliament’s first “ordinary” session of 2022 is his final duty of his mandate which will end in July.

“In my observation during my five-year term as a Head of State, the judiciary in Vanuatu under the leadership of Chief Justice has played an important role in stability, growth and progress of the nation for it uniqueness of it its independency,” he said.

“To cherish the stages of the third pillar of the constitution, I urge the government to carefully consider its decision to abolish the Ministry of Justice.

“It is important that the government maintain the Ministry of Justice. Without the judiciary, there will no effective work from the government and there will be no prosecution.

“The work of the Vanuatu Police force will have no bases and there will be a dictatorial system in place,” he said.

In his speech, Tallis also praised the country’s frontline workers for their hard work during the community outbreak of covid-19.

Frontline workers risked lives
He said frontline workers risked their lives and their families by being exposed to the virus.

He also hailed their efforts in challenging disinformation about the omicron variant.

Tallis said the hard work of the frontline workers had contributed to stabilising the outbreak in the affected provinces.

Meanwhile, Vanuatu’s Ministry of Health reports 37 new cases of covid-19.

Tallis told Parliament Vanuatu had gone through several challenges because of the covid pandemic.

He acknowledged the tourism sector for its contribution to the recovery of Vanuatu’s economy.

“Tourism has contributed a lot to economic growth but the only problem is that it is a fragile industry and cannot sustain us during total border restrictions which restricted the mobility and the movement of the tourists.

Tourism a ‘fragile industry’
“We experienced a high rate of unemployment with the closure of hotels and caused financial difficulties of the family.

“The other reason why I am saying that tourism is a fragile industry is the ongoing climate change impact across the globe which could affect this industry.

“In my humble view, I want to see government to invest more in vibrant industry such as agriculture, fisheries and utilising the natural resources in land and marine,” Tallis said.

He acknowledged government initiatives to redirect its focus in the agriculture sector and the programme of coconut replanting and cattle restocking and the establishment of the connection of the cooperative to the local farmers in order to participate effectively in the country’s economic growth.

The Prime Minister, Bob Loughman, and the Leader of the opposition, Ralph Regenvanu, both thanked Tallis for his role as Head of State during his five-year mandate.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

In a recent article (Weekend Herald, April 16) John Roughan wrote that the covid-19 pandemic has been an anticlimax in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Surprisingly, he acknowledges covid-19 has killed about 25 million people worldwide, so hopefully he was referring to New Zealand’s 600 deaths. He goes on to ask how many lives we in New Zealand have saved and states that it’s “not the 80,000 based on modelling from the Imperial College London that panicked governments everywhere in March 2020”.

I beg to differ. It is because governments panicked everywhere that the number of deaths so far is “only” about 25 million.

A recent comprehensive assessment of the covid-19 infection fatality proportion — the proportion of people infected with covid-19 who die from the infection — found that in April 2020, before most governments had “panicked”, the infection fatality proportion was 1.5 percent or more in numerous high-income countries. Included were Japan, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.

Without stringent public health measures, covid-19 is likely to have spread through the entire population, and an infection fatality proportion of 1.5 percent multiplied by 5 million (New Zealanders) equals 75,000.

That’s close to the estimated 80,000 New Zealand lives likely to have been saved because our “panicking” government, like many others, introduced restrictive public health measures.

Public health successes are invisible
What Roughan fails to appreciate is that public health successes are invisible. Unlike deaths, you cannot see people not dying.

Without the initial public health measures and then the rapid development and deployment of highly effective vaccines (unconscionably largely to high-income countries) there would have been far more deaths.

Roughan asks “is this a pandemic?” He states that 25 million covid deaths are only 0.3 percent of the world’s population (“only” 16,000 New Zealand deaths).

How many deaths make a pandemic? In 2020, covid-19 was the number one killer in the UK, responsible for causing about one in 10 deaths in every age group, with each person who died losing on average about 10 years of life expectancy.

In the US, more than 150,000 children have lost a primary or secondary caregiver to covid-19.

So, has our pandemic response been proportionate?

Stringent public health measures were highly effective pre-omicron, but are unsustainable long term.

New Zealand is incredibly fortunate
We are incredibly fortunate that highly effective vaccines were developed so rapidly.

Even the less severe omicron variant is a major killer of unvaccinated people, as demonstrated in Hong Kong, where the equivalent of 6000 New Zealanders have been killed by omicron in the past couple of months, due to low vaccination rates.

Unfortunately, despite our high vaccination rates, we are unlikely to be out of the woods, and it is likely a new covid-19 variant will be back to bite us. The only certainty is that the next variant will need to be even more contagious to overtake omicron.

As long as covid-19 passes to a new host before killing you, there is no selection advantage to a less fatal variant. We are just lucky that omicron was less virulent than delta.

Pandemics over the centuries have often taken several generations to change from being mass killers to causing the equivalent of a common cold.

What response will we accept as proportionate to shorten this process with covid-19 without millions of additional deaths?

As immunity from vaccination or infection wanes, we will need updated vaccines to prevent regular major disruptions to society.

A sustainable proportionate response
Unlike the flu, which has a natural R-value of less than two (one person on average infects fewer than two others), omicron appears to have an R-value of at least 10. That means in the time it takes flu to go from infecting one person to two, to four, to eight people, omicron (without a proportionate response) could go from infecting one to 10 to 100 to 1000 people.

There is no way that endemic covid will be as manageable as endemic flu.

The only sustainable proportionate response to covid-19 is for New Zealanders to embrace universal vaccination.

It is likely that vaccine passes will be required again if we want to live more normally and for society to thrive. It cannot be difficult to make the use of vaccine passes more seamless.

Almost every financial transaction today is electronic and it must be possible to link transactions to valid vaccine passes when required.

Almost 1 million eligible New Zealanders haven’t had their third vaccine dose, yet few are anti-vaccination.

Rather, thanks to vaccination and other public health measures, the pandemic has been an anticlimax for many New Zealanders and the third dose has not been a priority.

As already demonstrated, for the vast majority of New Zealanders, a vaccine pass is sufficient to make vaccination a priority.

Professor Rod Jackson is an epidemiologist with the University of Auckland. This article was originally published by The New Zealand Herald. Republished with the author’s permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A Whanganui iwi leader says the Aotearoa New Zealand government’s decision to ease covid-19 measures at this time is a disgrace and shocking.

He is warning Māori to stay vigilant against omicron and prepare for more to come.

Tūpoho chair Ken Mair says Māori must continue to be extremely careful and take precautions against covid-19, despite the government’s new strategy to begin living with the virus.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said gathering limits would ease before the weekend, with no limit for outside venues and gatherings of up to 200 allowed inside.

Vaccine passes and scanning would no longer be needed from April 4, and mandates would be scrapped for all except those in the health and aged care sectors, Corrections and at the border.

But Mair said the country was far from out of the woods, as shown by the number of daily covid-19 cases being reported — with 11 new deaths and 18,423 infections.

“It just seems crazy that the government are putting in place this strategy right now, at the worst time in regard to the high numbers of omicron within our community. It’s extremely dangerous,” Mair said.

Radio NZ News reports that Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said Māori had the highest rate of community cases of covid-19, overtaking Pacific people at 28 per 1000. Rates for NZ European and Asian ethic groups is 21 per 1000.

‘Where’s the Māori lens?’
“Where’s the Māori lens over this? Certainly, within our community there are hundreds [of cases] and there are a number in hospital.

“I just can’t understand a strategy where there hasn’t been any real analysis with substance in regard to the impact upon iwi, hapū and Māori, noting that we’re an extremely vulnerable community in the context of respiratory and asthma ailments.”

Mair said he understood some Māori leaders had been in discussion with the government and had made recommendations for the new strategy, but it appeared they had been ignored.

“I’ve been deeply concerned over the last couple of months where there doesn’t appear to be a strong Māori voice coming through or anything that might indicate that the government have a clear understanding of the ramifications of their decision around the covid strategy.

“This is a classic example — decisions being made right in the midst of cases going up, new variants around the corner, without understanding the impact and implications for Māori. I just think that’s a disgrace and shocking.”

Mair said he thought the strategy had been politicised, with Labour’s polling and political pressure the key factors.

“What motivates you to put in place an extremely dangerous strategy? You can only assume the motivation’s around political expediency and the impact upon economic wellbeing, without having the health lens driving your decision making.

Risk for vulnerable ignored
“The decisions by the prime minister and the government clearly have not taken into account the real vulnerability of Māori, and I think Māori, iwi and hapū have to be extremely careful in this precarious time.”

Yesterday, the prime minister said restrictions were being eased because it was safe to do so. Mair said this ignored the risk that remained for the vulnerable and sent the wrong message.

“I think because of the government’s strategy, people are saying things like: well, we’re going to get it anyway, it doesn’t matter, let’s get on with it and get back to normality as quickly as possible.

“The problem with those comments, of course, is the vulnerability of our Māori community, hapū and iwi is extremely high.

“I think our community in general is beginning to take a kind of defeatist approach and we should be, I think, extremely careful and vigilant in regard to dealing with this omicron.

“I have no doubt in my mind there’ll be more variants around the corner and we should always be prepared.”

Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air. Asia Pacific Report is a community partner.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

New Zealand’s Director-General of Health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, says covid-19 case numbers have passed their peak in Auckland, the country’s largest city, but that people should remain vigilant.

Dr Bloomfield said there were 20,907 new community cases of covid-19, a further 15 deaths and 1016 people in hospital in today.

He said the latest analysis showed covid-19 case numbers had passed their peak in Auckland, and were tracking down in all three district health boards.

Dr Bloomfield said that analysis also showed case numbers nationally — not including Auckland — were also slowing. They increased just 1 percent in the seven days to March 20, compared to a 44 percent increase in the week ending March 13.

The pattern did differ by DHB, with cases still increasing in the South Island, although there were encouraging signs they were peaking in the Midland region and in the Wellington region.

He said case numbers appeared to be largely now following the modelling for a high-transmission scenario. Case numbers were higher than the modelling suggested, and Dr Bloomfield said this may be because most cases in New Zealand were the BA.2 subvariant.

Hospitalisations in the northern region were also levelling off.

“We’re watching carefully and the expectation is that they will start to drop as the week progresses,” Dr Bloomfield said.

“The average length of stay for people on wards in the Auckland hospitals who have been discharged is now 3.2 days compared to just over two days last month, and the average stay in intensive care is five days.

“This increase in average length of stay reflects that we’re now seeing that people who are needing longer care, they may even be over their covid infection but they have symptoms that need to be managed, often from underlying conditions.”

Watch the update 

Video: RNZ News

Dr Bloomfield said that even though cases in hospital in Auckland were staying high, the number of new admissions each day was dropping quickly. But because those being admitted now were sicker and required longer care in hospital, the total number of people in hospital remained fairly steady.

Emergency department admissions testing positive remain highest at Middlemore, but they had fallen from 40 percent last month to 28 percent now. Auckland Hospital was down from 30 percent to 22 percent, while Waitematā was steady about 18 percent.

Whangārei’s ED positivity rate was still increasing, he said.

“Admissions in the rest of the country are growing and we will continue to see them grow.”

Dr Bloomfield said hospitalisation rates during the delta outbreak was about 8 percent, whereas the omicron outbreak had been about 0.9 percent.

“That hospitalisation rate will appear to increase over coming weeks, because as the cases drop yet people remain in hospital we’ll see the denominator decline much quicker … hospitalisations will decline but more slowly,” he said.

“The number of deaths each day is also likely to increase and will take longer to decline.”

He said staffing shortages were a major pressure on the health system, and there was real pressure in hospitals as well as care in the community, including rest homes.

‘Covid isn’t done with the world just yet’
Dr Bloomfield said New Zealand could expect ongoing waves of covid, and looking across the Tasman was instructive.

“The number of people hospitalised with covid in New South Wales never dropped below 950 after their first omicron wave … it’s now back over 1000 as cases started to increase again.

“In contrast, in Victoria the number of hospitalisations declined down to around 200 and remained steady there … so two quite different pictures.”

He said this showed New Zealand should expect to see a residual number of cases and people in hospital.

The UK had seen increased case numbers with the BA.2 subvariant, with Scotland hit hardest.

“Case numbers there are just below their previous peak, and hospitalisation figures the highest they have been since 2020. Globally it’s likely there will continue to be further waves of omicron and likewise there will be new variants of concern.”

He said New Zealand would face these just as other countries would.

“Covid isn’t done with the world just yet.”

Looking ahead
Tomorrow the government is due to announce if it will relax mandates, vaccine passes and the traffic light system as the omicron outbreak passes its peak in Auckland. Cabinet discussed reducing the restrictions yesterday.

Ahead of the announcement, Dr Bloomfield said New Zealand was still in the middle of a global pandemic which had thrown curveballs before and would continue to.

“We need to be prepared to redeploy the measures that we already have in place or have used in the past.”

He said there was a balance between protecting the population — particularly vulnerable groups — and only using restrictions for the extent they were needed.

At the moment, total ICU and HDU beds were about 60 percent occupied, he said. Each day hospitals were looking at the number of beds available and staffing those accordingly.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The clamour in New Zealand to ditch vaccine passes and change the traffic light setting is poorly timed, an epidemiologist says.

The number of covid-19 deaths is on the rise, with nine reported today.

One thousand people are now in hospital, including 26 in ICU, the highest number yet in intensive care.

University of Auckland epidemiologist Professor Rod Jackson said the worst may be yet to come.

It is “too soon to relax”, although the country is nearing its peak, Professor Jackson said.

He said the push for change is “politicking” and not many businesses want to remove vaccine passes at present.

He told RNZ Morning Report that looking around the world other countries did not go straight up and down with their peaks and New Zealand would be at risk of “yo-yoing around” if vaccine passes and other public health interventions were removed too soon.

Vaccine passes should be retained until it was clear that the omicron outbreak was just about over, he said.

‘We’re at the top’
“We’re at the top at the moment. It makes absolutely no sense to remove any effective public health measures when we’re still at the top.

“It’s crazy. I think it’s political nonsense to be pushing to take them away now.”

Professor Jackson said more than 1 million New Zealanders still needed to get their booster. As well, the unvaccinated were twice as likely to catch covid-19, three times as likely to transmit it than fully boosted people and five times more likely to be in hospital.

“We’re not over it yet … those relatively small numbers of people, when you do all of those multiplications, they are sufficient to overwhelm our health system.”

He referred to what was happening in the UK and parts of Australia where there were rising case numbers.

“I know there’s huge pressure to take away the vaccine passes but I think it’s a mistake.”

Professor Jackson said it was business which forced the government to introduce vaccine mandates and he did not believe they were hugely in favour of taking them away now.

“I think this is politicking.”

Makes no sense
It did not make sense to change the traffic light setting in the next few days either.

“We’ve got more people in hospital today than we’ve ever had. We’ve got more deaths than we’ve ever had.

“It just doesn’t make any sense to be relaxing public health measures that have proven to be incredibly effective at the peak of an outbreak.”

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told Morning Report that the traffic light system must be “no more restrictive” than needed and mandates would not be as necessary after the first omicron wave.

Cabinet was meeting today to review vaccine mandates, vaccine passports and the traffic light system, though any decisions will not be announced until Wednesday.

Watch the PM talking to Morning Report

The changes will mark the biggest domestic shake up to covid-19 restrictions since omicron arrived on Aotearoa’s shores.

“We know that in the future we’re likely to have have additional waves of omicron… We’re already seeing that in other countries,” Ardern said.

“So let’s make sure we get the covid protection framework, that traffic light system, right for the future.

“We want it to be no more restrictive than it needs to be, so if there are areas we can pare it back, we will.”

She said that with a highly vaccinated population the government believed mandates and vaccine passes would no longer be as necessary once the omicron outbreak had peaked.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

An Auckland nurse says a lucrative incentive payment has not fixed the city’s dire hospital staffing shortage in Aotearoa New Zealand’s current covid-19 outbreak.

Nurses, midwives and others employed by the region’s district health boards (DHBs) have been entitled to an extra $500 on top of their normal pay for extra shifts overnight.

The scheme is being reviewed today and the clinical director in charge of co-ordinating the city’s health response, Dr Andrew Old, said it would continue if it was needed to address staffing shortages.

Dr Old said going into the pandemic Auckland’s hospitals had about 15 percent staff vacancies across the board which meant starting from a challenging position.

“So you then layer on top of that the challenge of Covid and it really has stretched the city.”

A nurses’ union delegate at Waitematā DHB, Di McCulloch, said while the $500 incentive scheme was popular, it had not been good for nursing overall because it led to exhausted workers and did not fix the staffing problems.

She said the nursing situation was dire.

Influx of unwell patients
“We continue to have an influx of unwell patients that normally enter the hospital and this has been compounded by omicron.”

She said once the subsidy ends the nursing shortages will continue and the DHBs will continue to redeploy non-clinical staff to fill the staffing gaps in wards.

Dr Old acknowledged how tired hospital staff in Auckland are.

“You know this has been going on for two years and the intensity has really stepped up in the last couple of weeks and I think certainly the city and the country are incredibly well served by the professionalism of the health workforce.”

Dr Old said the $500 payment was being reviewed today and there was the potential for it to be extended.

It aimed to ensure staff were available, particularly for hard to fill shifts such as overnights, he said.

“Look, we recognise people are tired, we’re asking them to go above and beyond and it’s just a recognition of the fact that actually everyone is really stretched.”

Hospitals just managing
Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director Sarah Dalton described the current situation as a crisis and said hospitals were only just managing.

“People are going above and beyond, they’re doing everything they can to keep it safe for patients, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a crisis, it doesn’t mean that the entrenched short staffing that we were trying to deal with before covid hasn’t made this almost impossible to deal with.”

It was not just Auckland and a lot of surgery and outpatient appointments were being cancelled around the country, she said.

McCulloch said the border closure had made the nursing shortages worse because in the past there had been a reliance on internationally qualified nurses (IQN).

“So it’s become an ongoing issue, this has been going on for years within nursing and the nursing voice are saying that we are tired, we are exhausted, we are short-staffed daily on the ground.”

But McCulloch said that had “not been heard by the powers that be”.

In terms of dealing with New Zealand’s ongoing nursing shortage, McCulloch said New Zealand needed to keep its new nursing graduates working here.

She said that could mean bonding newly qualified nurses to working in New Zealand for a minimum of two years.

Auckland hospitals put care on hold
Auckland hospitals have put all but the most urgent care on hold to allow them to focus on covid-19 patients.

At the same time they are managing with 25 percent fewer staff as covid-19 cases continue to rise.

There were 19,566 cases and 930 people in hospital with the virus yesterday, more than two thirds of them in Auckland. Ten new covid-related deaths were also reported, taking the total to 151.

Dr Old said the region was grappling with peak hospitalisations and staff shortages due to the omicron outbreak.

“We’re in the eye of the storm now, so with cases thankfully coming down a bit but peak hospitalisations coinciding with near peak staff needing to be off to support their own family or off with covid themselves.”

But Dr Old said the number of staff vacancies due to covid-19 was starting to come down as coronavirus numbers start to drop and he was hopeful that things would improve this week.

He said there had been some limited cases of covid-19 positive staff working at Auckland hospital’s as the region dealt with the peak.

Serious challenges
“Those have been people where without them coming back we would have had serious challenges keeping those services going and so yes, coming back into environments where they’re only dealing with covid positive patients.”

Dalton said it was appalling to be in a position where in limited circumstances employers are encouraging staff unwell with covid-19 to go back to work.

“What they’re saying is they’re only doing that in covid settings and where otherwise there would be risk to life and limb effectively, so it’s a life preserving service.

“But to think that we’re in such a fragile state in terms of staffing that that has to be part of cover at the moment is really distressing.”

Dr Old stressed that urgent care was still available at the region’s hospitals.

“But anything that can be deferred essentially over the last couple of weeks really has been, so that’s pretty much all out-patient activity … and almost all planned surgery as well.”

Challenging to get support to South Auckland families
Auckland Pacific health and social service provider The Fono said it was run off its feet keeping up with the demands of a community struck by covid-19.

Chief executive Tevita Funaki said the service was looking after more than 900 active cases at one time.

“It’s not just the health challenges but also the whole welfare support and food and also other needs of the families.”

The service also had a number of staff getting sick or isolating due to covid-19.

The Fono had been using the network of churches in the Pacific community to distribute what was needed for families, Tevita said.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

New Zealand’s Ministry of Health has reported 19,542 new cases of covid-19 in the community and 24 more deaths today.

The ministry said eight people had died with covid-19 yesterday, while a further 16 people had died in the past three weeks.

“Local public health authorities have notified these deaths to the ministry in the past 24 hours as part of changes to the reporting of deaths announced last week. Delays to reporting can be associated with people dying with, rather than of covid-19, and covid being discovered after they have died,” the statement said.

The minister in charge of New Zealand’s covid-19 response has also now himself tested positive for the coronavirus.

Tweeting an image of a rapid antigen test, Chris Hipkins said: “The faint line seems out of keeping with how I currently feel!

“Day 7 of isolation and now it’s my turn. So I’ll be clocking off for another 7 days. Take care out there everyone.”

The faint line seems out of keeping with how I currently feel! Day 7 of isolation and now it’s my turn. So I’ll be clocking off for another 7 days. Take care out there everyone. pic.twitter.com/9wt8u7oe3o

— Chris Hipkins (@chrishipkins) March 15, 2022

Hipkins would normally have fronted today’s covid-19 update, but the media conference has been cancelled for today.

MPs testing positive
Hipkins is the latest of several MPs to have tested positive, including Environment Minister David Parker, Police Minister Poto Williams, opposition National Party leader Christopher Luxon and National MP Simon Bridges.

In the ministry’s report today, a person in their 40s was one of the people with Covid-19 whose death was reported today, while another person was in their 50s. The others include four in their 60s, three in their 70s, eight in their 80s and six in their 90s.

Eleven were women and twelve were men. The ministry said the average age was 79 and this had been increasing over the last week.

Eight of the 24 deaths reported today were people who died at aged residential care facilities.

The total number of deaths of people with covid-19 is now 141.

The rolling seven-day average of deaths over the past seven days is seven, up from four yesterday.

The ministry said the trend of increasing numbers of deaths was sadly not unexpected.

Higher numbers
“As has occurred with omicron overseas, while covid-19 cases are usually seen in higher numbers among younger people early in the outbreak, over time the more severe and fatal consequences of the virus fall disproportionately on our older and more vulnerable populations.”

There are 971 people in hospital, 21 of whom are in ICU. The average age of the people with covid-19 in hospital is 57.

There were also 17 new cases identified at the border.

Yesterday there were 21,616 new cases of the novel coronavirus in the community and two more deaths. There were 960 people in hospital.

Asia Pacific Report adds: Covid-19 modeller Professor Michael Plank was quoted in news reports as indicating the ethnicity of cases could increase the number of severe cases.

Māori make up about 17 percent of the 5 million population, but 20 percent of all cases, and 25 percent of those hospitalised, reports the New Zealand Herald.

Pasifika make up 8 percent of the population, but 21 percent of all cases and 38 percent of those hospitalised.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

It is too early to say New Zealand has peaked, and declining tallies are no reason to celebrate as covid-19 is still rife in our communities with a record eight deaths reported in a day, an epidemiologist says.

University of Auckland professor Rod Jackson said the coronavirus is occurring so frequently right now that anyone with covid-like symptoms can assume they have virus, unless they get a negative PCR test.

The reported cases are thought to be a fraction of the actual cases out there in the community, he said.

In the past three days, 22 people with covid-19 have died – nearly a 5th of the country’s total death toll of 113 since the virus arrived in New Zealand more than two years ago.

And while the number of people dying with the virus is a small percentage of those who test positive, the huge volume of people catching the virus at the moment means experts have warned there will be increasing deaths over the coming weeks.

So, early celebrations about a dip in case numbers are both premature, and rely on an incomplete picture of what is actually happening.

Yesterday was the fifth day in a row the Ministry of Health said recorded case numbers had declined, with 14,494 new covid-19 cases reported on Saturday, and the total number of infections dropping by 9000 to 197,251 people currently infected.

Dip marked for Auckland
The dip was especially marked for Auckland, which on March 8 reported 10,000 cases, but was down to 4509 yesterday.

Professor Jackson said from the data available, he could not tell if New Zealand and Auckland’s case numbers had peaked, or not.

“The cases can go up and down from day to day. The most important thing for all the people to realise is that we’re only reporting a quarter or a third of all the cases. So, if you’ve got 20,000 cases reported — there could be 40,000 to 60,000.

“I think it’s too early to call. I’d love to believe it’s on the decline in Auckland, it’s clearly still going up elsewhere, but I just don’t think we have any clear idea — we’re shooting in the dark because people are either not getting tested, or if they’re getting tested many of them are not reported, and the rate at which we report could change over time.

“So it is possible that in Auckland we’re still going up.”

Professor Jackson points out covid-19 tends to run in ongoing waves, and since the start of the pandemic there had been ongoing waves throughout countries that had battled it around the world.

“We’re seeing it not just in NSW, we’re seeing it in most of Europe as well, we’re just beginning to see the numbers climb again.”

‘Too many restrictions lifted’
“I think governments have taken too many restrictions off too early. I think we’re going to see more waves of omicron — hopefully not as bad, but I’d strongly recommend that we keep some of the basic restrictions in place, the ones that are not too disruptive.

“Certainly masks in public places, certainly people should make an effort to keep their distance.”

It is vital that everyone who qualifies for a booster vaccine goes and gets one, he said.

“It’s by far the most important thing anyone can do – make sure they’re vaxxed to the max. Make sure you’re ready for it, you’re fully immunised.”

University of Otago epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker, told RNZ First Up today that protecting the older and more vulnerable parts of the community from exposure to the virus was important, to try to prevent deaths.

About a million people have been slow getting their booster, he said, but the difference in immunity for those who had it could be lifesaving.

“We know that hospitalisations lag about seven to 10 days after the rise of cases, but unfortunately deaths lag even longer, three to four weeks, so we haven’t seen the peak of deaths yet.

10 to 20 deaths a day
“This may rise into that range of 10 to 20 deaths a day for several days, based on international experience.”

Professor Baker does believe there is rising evidence to say New Zealand’s case numbers may have peaked, with Auckland peaking about nine days ago, and the rest of the country about five days ago.

But he said it will take four to six weeks to flatten the high case numbers down.

“Remarkably, yesterday was the first day in six weeks where we saw a drop in cases in every DHB across New Zealand. Obviously you need a few more days to be sure that’s a pattern, but that’s looking positive.”

He said the figures could still sit around 5000 new cases a day for months.

Yesterday, Canterbury University epidemic modeller Professor Michael Plank told RNZ there were strong signs that Auckland’s case numbers have peaked.

Areas close to Auckland like Hamilton and Tauranga would not be too close behind, but the rest of the country was likely about a week and a half behind, he said.

Settling of numbers needed
Microbiologist Dr Siouxsie Wiles said there needed to be a settling of the numbers before it could be declared that Auckland had peaked. But she was worried about what is happening in Europe.

“They had a wave and it dropped quite quickly and now it’s rising again.

“We’re obviously going into winter and that really concerns me because as well as having covid, we’re also soon opening our borders, so we’re going to have more things like influenza coming in, so it could be a very difficult winter ahead and I think people really need to be preparing themselves for that,” she said.

“The other thing we have to remember is a lot of people who have been infected in this wave in New Zealand have been younger people, so if it moves from younger people into older age groups then we’re much more likely to see an increase in deaths.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The number of people with covid-19 who have died in New Zealand has now reached 105, with 14 deaths reported in the past two days.

There are more than 206,000 active cases of covid-19 in the community, with another 18,699 new community cases reported today.

The Ministry of Health announced seven further deaths of people with covid-19 today which, after another seven deaths yesterday, has taken the total death toll to 105.

But University of Otago professor of international health Dr Philip Hill said international statistics for deaths showed that New Zealand’s number could easily have been in the thousands had the country not had high vaccination rates and effective pandemic restrictions.

“I think what we are seeing is just how wonderful a vaccine we’ve got, that we’re having a massive covid-19 outbreak and not experiencing huge numbers of deaths.”

Hill stressed it should be remembered that covid-19 was continuing to kill New Zealanders, and just like earlier variants omicron was a life-threatening disease.

But he said that with covid-19 so widespread some of the deaths in the death tally so far include people whose death occurred because of other causes, while they also had the virus.

“The classification of these deaths has not been complete for many of them, which basically means that there are significant numbers of people who are dying of something else and that coincidentally have covid-19. That can be quite tricky to tease out.”

In a statement, the Ministry of Health said there were 853 people in hospital with covid-19, including 17 in ICU.

However, Auckland health authorities remain cautiously optimistic that the omicron outbreak may have peaked in the country’s biggest city, and community case numbers in the region continue to slowly fall, with 6077 cases reported today — down from 7240 yesterday and less than half the number reported last week.

‘These are clearly seriously premature deaths’
Epidemiologist Professor Rod Jackson of Auckland University urged older people to take the risk of covid-19 seriously as the number of deaths from the virus continued to rise.

Six of the 14 deaths in the past two days were people in their seventies.

Jackson said it was inevitable that the older population would feel the effects of the virus as it passed from kids to their parents and onwards.

But he said it was not just the oldest people in the community who were at high risk.

“These are clearly seriously premature deaths, this is not just old sick people who are going to die in the next few days, these are people who are losing years of a potential healthy life,” he said.

Stark wake-up call
Dr Jackson said the death toll in Hong Kong was a stark wake-up call for those writing it off as a mild illness.

“You just have to look at Hong Kong today; it’s a population of 7.5 million, so it’s only New Zealand plus a half, and they’re having well over 200 deaths a day. Their health services are overwhelmed. They’re in big trouble at the moment.”

Dr Jackson urged people to keep acting with caution to prevent the spread, and to seek medical advice if they were concerned about their health.

On Thursday the Ministry of Health changed how covid-19-related deaths are reported.

The death of anyone who dies within 28 days of testing positive for covid-19 is now reported.

This group is divided into three categories:

• where covid-19 is the clear cause of death;
• where there was another clear cause of death; and
• where the cause of deaths is not known.

Deaths will mount
By Thursday this week, 34 people had died where covid-19 was clearly the cause, two people had died of another clear cause after testing positive for covid-19, and the deaths of 48 people with the virus did not yet have a clear cause, the ministry said.

As covid-19 cases mount, increasing numbers of deaths will also follow as people progress through the disease, the ministry said.

“It important to remember that each of these deaths represents significant loss for family and loved ones.”

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Auckland health authorities remain cautiously optimistic that the omicron outbreak may have peaked in the country’s biggest city, even though 601 of the 856 people in hospital with covid-19 are in Auckland.

Clinical leads Dr Andrew Old, Dr Anthony Jordan and Dr Christine McIntosh at the Northern Region Health Coordination Centre gave details today on the covid-19 response.

Dr Old confirmed there were seven new deaths of people with covid-19 to report today.– the highest death toll in a day since the outbreak began.

Five of the deaths were in Auckland, one in Waikato, and one in the Southern region, reports the Ministry of Health.

One person was in their 50s, four were in their 70s, one was their 80s, and one person was in their 90s. Four were male and three were female.

The number of people in hospital has also risen to a record 856 people, with 20 in ICU —  including 10 in Auckland — and the total new cases today is 20,989.

The total number of publicly reported covid-19 related deaths is now 98.

“It highlights that although omicron is a mild illness for many people, for some it is not,” said Dr Old.

“Every death is a tragedy and our thoughts and condolences are with the families and loved ones of the people who have passed away.”

Cautiously optimistic
He remained cautiously optimistic about the situation in Auckland.

“Our three-day rolling average of cases is about 8500 per day, which is down from a peak of about 14,000.

“Today in Auckland was the first time since this started that we had fewer people in hospital with covid at 8am this morning than we did yesterday. One day is not a trend, but certainly that is the first time.”

At Counties Manukau, the number of people coming through the door at ED is lower than it was last week. It was too early to call it, he said, but there were some encouraging signs.

Dr Old said health services in some cases were managing on a day-to-day, shift-by-shift, or hour-by-hour basis.

“I would say that we are in a crunch at the moment, so a lot of our services are operating at what’s called minimum service delivery, so a lot of those sort of more routine, corporate type activities are being put on hold.”

He said authorities knew not every case had been detected, but there was good testing coverage, with about 15 percent of people enrolled with a GP in Auckland having been tested in the past fortnight.

Relatively young
The average age of people in hospitals is still relatively young, but as the total hospitalisations have risen, more older and vulnerable members have been affected.

Dr Old said this was a trend that matched those seen overseas, and omicron tended to have a long tail, with more vulnerable and older populations more likely to be affected towards the end of outbreaks.

“People need to remain vigilant to protect those in our families and communities who are at greater risk.”

He said it was a mild illness for most people but a more severe illness for other people you could pass it on to.

Another reason to remain vigilant is the problem of long covid, he said. What was known about long covid from other variants should give pause, he said.

He urged people to keep up mask use and good hygiene as it will make a real difference as we start to come out of the outbreak and beyond.

He said authorities were expecting hospitalisations to increase again this week and they have. As a percentage of current active cases this remains about 0.5 percent, and across the whole outbreak about 1.5 percent of cases have been treated in hospital.

Dr Old said that was likely to be an overestimate, because not all infections were being reported and counted.

‘We know it’s pretty tough out there’
Dr McIntosh said that in the peak of the outbreak the whole system was feeling the strain.

“We know it’s pretty tough out there and we know that you’re doing a phenomenal job.”

She said it was not just the staff in Auckland, it was the system and workers across the whole country who were supporting the health efforts.

She said it was important that people with severe or worsening symptoms to seek help and call 111 without delay.

“Your GP and healthline are there to help you if you need it … we would rather help and help you manage a worsening illness at the earlier stages than wait until someone is really dangerously ill.”

Dr McIntosh said there were pressures within GP practices and the primary care organisation leads were met with every day, and those issues are discussed.

“But indeed it is pretty stretched … the crunch is on.”

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New Zealand’s Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield and Royal NZ College of General Practitioners president Dr Samantha Murton gave a briefing today on the government’s response to the omicron outbreak as hospital cases continue to climb.

The daily number of new community cases has dropped slightly today to 21,015 community cases, but the number of people in hospital with the coronavirus continues to rise, reaching 845.

There are now more people in hospital with covid-19 than at any other point over the past two years, the Ministry of Health said.

Today’s numbers are down compared to yesterday’s 22,454 and 742 hospitalisations, with a record 19 cases in ICU.

Speaking at today’s briefing, Dr Murton said 80 percent of GPs were now looking after more than 20 patients.

“It has put a huge amount of work on general practice. When you think about the fact that there are 20,000 people who have got covid every day and across the country 50,000 consultations normally happen every day, that’s a 50 percent increase in workload if we had to deal with every one of those 20,000 that came through,” she said.

‘Huge amount of work’
“It has put a huge amount of work on general practice. When you think about the fact that there are 20,000 people who have got covid every day and across the country 50,000 consultations normally happen every day, that’s a 50 percent increase in workload if we had to deal with every one of those 20,000 that came through,” she said.

“My colleagues want me to remind everyone that we are working really hard, doing our best for our patients and although we are prepared and have done the best we can do for when the outbreak occurred, it is still going to be a little bit messy for the next couple of weeks.”

Watch the media briefing

Video: RNZ News

She said that was because there were people who wanted care and then people who needed care and were “quite vulnerable”.

Those vulnerable people will be the ones GPs are focusing on, she said.

“The other thing we have found is that across the country, people are stressed.

“People are stressed about having covid, people are stressed about being isolated, about not being able to go out, about having family members who might be sick and the practices are under pressure to provide as much care as they can and so that stress can often end up with a lot of anxiety and peoples’ emotions might flare, to put it politely.

“My colleagues have suggested people be kind to their providers.

‘Have a bit of patience’
“Please have a bit of patience as patients.”

She also put out a reminder that booster vaccine shots were the best protection people could get.

Auckland hospitals have reported that they are dealing with far more covid-19 cases than even their worst case scenarios predicted, with daily case numbers as high as 533 across the city’s hospitals this week.

In Wellington, frontline care workers are operating around the clock to help the more than 17,000 people across the region who are isolating at home and in need of some level of assistance.

Canterbury District Health Board is already teetering on patient capacity, three weeks away from an expected peak of covid-19 cases.

Health Minister Chris Hipkins has announced that the isolation period for covid-19 cases and their household contacts is reducing to one week, down from 10 days, from tomorrow.

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Police are out in force in New Zealand’s capital Wellington after yesterday’s massive operation to clear the illegal anti-covid public health measures occupation of Parliament grounds.

There were chaotic scenes as protesters scrambled to save what gear they could and some were pepper-sprayed.

People set fire to trees and tents and loud bangs could be heard — possibly gas canisters exploding — as the flames spread, damaging the children’s playground and surrounding trees.

The fires were put out, allowing police to push protesters onto the streets but tensions simmered for hours.

At the height of the confrontation officers fired sponge bullets and protesters hurled bricks, pieces of of wood, rubbish and traffic cones in running battles on central city streets.

As of late last night, 87 people had been arrested for offences including trespass, wilful damage and possession of restricted weapons.

Question time cancelled
Parliament’s regular question time has been cancelled today and MPs are instead delivering speeches on yesterday’s chaos.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern makes an initial statement, followed by other party leaders.

The House will then adjourn early and return on Tuesday.

As damage to Parliament’s grounds and surrounding streets is assessed, the future of protest in New Zealand — both online and in person — will have to be reconsidered, said Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson.

This morning parliamentary services workers were out in gloves beginning the work of dismantling and disposing of piles of debris left strewn across the site when protesters were forced out by police yesterday.

The violent scenes ended a three-week occupation, and left behind couches, clothing, tents and gazebos, barbecues, gas bottles and camping gear, as well as the gaps left when paving stones were torn out and hurled at police and charred damage from fires lit in a final desperate stand.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health reported 23,183 new community cases of covid-19 today, with 503 people in hospital, including seven in intensive care.

In a statement, the ministry said a new death of a New Zealander with covid-19 had been recorded with a person dying in a Bay of Plenty rest home. The person died of an unrelated medical condition while receiving palliative care and had tested positive for the coronavirus.

There are 146,527 known active community cases in New Zealand.

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Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield says the national health system relies on New Zealanders’ continued cooperation as almost 20,000 cases are announced today.

Dr Bloomfield is resuming his appearance at daily 1pm media briefings amid the omicron outbreak, with peak cases and hospitalisations expected in the next few weeks.

He said today nearly 20,000 new cases of covid-19 had been reported, with 373 people in hospital, nine of whom are in ICU.

He said it was hard to estimate how many people in hospital with covid-19 were there because of the virus, as opposed to simply having the virus and being there for a different reason.

However, he said Middlemore Hospital’s estimate of about 70 percent to 80 percent presenting because of covid-19 symptoms gives a good gauge.

There are just under 100,000 active cases across the motu, he said.

“I know that such a high daily case number can be concerning for people to hear, and many of us will now have whānau members who now have covid-19, but it’s important to remember that covid-19 now is a very different foe to what it was at the beginning of the pandemic.”

He said what had helped New Zealand so far had been doing the basics well and people should keep doing this — wearing masks, practising good hand hygiene, and avoiding going out if unwell.

“There’s no doubt the next few weeks are going to be tough, the health system can’t do it alone, so thanks in advance to all New Zealanders for continuing to support our efforts to live with the virus on our terms.”

Watch a replay of the briefing here:

The media conference today. Video: RNZ News

He said the high vaccination rate meant for most people omicron would be a milder illness and could be managed safely at home.

Dr Bloomfield says PCR testing had served New Zealand “incredibly well”, but with thousands of cases each day the country reached the point last week where rapid antigen testing became both useful and appropriate.

He said samples were typically pooled earlier on in the outbreak, but a positive test in a batch means each will need to be retested. Higher test positivity rates now, however, mean it becomes less feasible.

He said prior to February 7, none of the labs had ever exceeded 5 percent test positivity, but the swift increase in positive cases has affected that. Labs have also had other difficulties, including vacancies in roles and sickness because some lab workers had contracted the virus.

Apology over test result backlog
Dr Bloomfield said he wanted to apologise to people whose tests had been delayed, but said they had committed to completing the test processing.

People are still advised to seek a test, though some people facing a longer delay should also seek a rapid antigen test, he said.

The samples affected by the backlog might be slightly less accurate — they were more likely to show a negative result — but all positive results would be accurate.

Dr Bloomfield said some 9000 tests were sent to Queensland for testing, to help clear the backlog. He said the backlog was clearing, but anyone who had had a test on February 23 or earlier, or who had developed symptoms, should collect a rapid antigen test from their local testing centre or seek advice from Healthline.

He said the problem with delays in PCR testing was less to do with delays in rolling out rapid antigen tests, and more to do with the ministry being “a day or two late” to recognise how quickly the virus was spreading.

“Once the samples were in the lab it’s hard to take them out and redistribute them, so we still had capacity across the network but we didn’t have the opportunity to redistribute them and probably if we’d started to do that a day or two earlier, then we may still have had a backlog but perhaps not such a big one.”

Dr Bloomfield said test processing had got to a much more manageable level in the past 24 to 48 hours.

He said there was strong uptake of RATs for people who had symptoms, or who were household or close contacts, as well as surveillance testing at hospitals and aged care facilities.

If people needed to pick up a rapid antigen test, the Healthpoint website had an increasing list of places where they were available.

Dr Bloomfield said there were good numbers of the tests available now — more than five million had been distributed in the last seven days, there were over 12 million in storage, and more than 16 million were expected to arrive this week.

Self-reporting of test results
Bloomfield thanks the more than 40,000 people who have self-reported a rapid antigen test result. He says it is an important measure to give officials a good idea of how far the virus is spreading.

He says people who are unwell will be given enough tests for three tests per eligible person in their household. People who are critical workers can also preorder the tests online from testing centres.

During question time Dr Bloomfield said there was a bit of a lag on whole genome sequencing for those who have been in hospital, and with the short hospital stay times, there is not an accurate picture of how many cases in hospital are omicron versus delta.

The most common symptoms are cough, sore and scratchy throat, a runny nose, and generally feeling unwell, “that sort of flu-ey feeling, the whole body aches”, but people who are not boosted are far more likely to have more severe symptoms.

Dr Bloomfield said the loss of sense of smell and taste does not appear to be as much of a notable symptom for omicron, but some young people had also been experiencing an upset stomach.

The past two days have seen daily cases above the 14,000 mark, and hospitalisations have also continued to increase, reaching 344 yesterday.

It comes as the government yesterday confirmed New Zealanders would be able to return to New Zealand without isolating, with the date for returnees from countries other than Australia brought forward to Friday.

New Zealanders in Australia and critical workers were yesterday able to return without entering managed isolation.

People who are eligible but have not yet got their booster shot are urged to, as it protects against both transmission and severe illness from the omicron variant.

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Epidemiologist Sir David Skegg, who along with his team has been providing advice to the New Zealand government on the covid-19 response, says more border restrictions may ease soon, as the opposition National Party calls for all visitors to be allowed into the country.

Yesterday, the government announced that from 11.59pm on Wednesday, vaccinated New Zealanders returning to the country and who test negative on pre-departure will no longer have to self-isolate on arrival.

The move brings forward step two of the phased reopening of the border, but the National Party says that does not go far enough and is calling for the border to be open to all visitors, to jump-start the tourism industry.

The government relied on urgent advice from the Strategic Covid-19 Public Health Advisory Group — chaired by Sir David — before making the changes.

Sir David told Morning Report the next few weeks were expected to be very challenging on the health system as the peak of the omicron outbreak evolves, so it was best to wait until then before making decisions about opening to tourists.

“We still don’t know where it’s going to end. The number of people going into hospital every day is increasing, so I’m not surprised that they’re [the government] just going to take a bit of time to decide about that, but I expect that tourists will be welcome to New Zealand earlier than we expected,” he said.

“And it’s funny everyone calls for certainty, but actually this is a case where the uncertainty has been beneficial to those interests because the dates are coming forward.”

Tourism industry planning
However, National Party Covid-19 response spokesperson Chris Bishop told Morning Report that the tourism industry needed that certainty from now to plan ahead.

“If you talk to people involved in the tourism industry, they are literally borrowing money on their credit cards, mortgaging their houses to try and get through. And so what we can do for them is reconnect New Zealand to the world, open those borders, and allow tourists to come here,” he said.

“You’re probably not going to see a massive influx of tourists straight away in the next two to three, four weeks, you know, airlines have got to put flights on.

“But it is really important that we send signal to the airlines and to the airport that tourists are going to come and they’re going to come soon because airlines are making those bookings for the next few months and the next year right now so they do need some certainty, they do need that time frame.”

Bishop said while there would be some risk in such a decision, it was about considering the “relative risk”.

“The relative risk of allowing people who are vaccinated, who have passed the pre-departure test, to arrive into New Zealand, going into a country with one of the highest reproduction rates in the world right now and with 15,000 covid cases per day, the relative risk is much lower.

“But you’ve also got to weigh that up against the incredibly tough circumstances that our tourist parts of the economy have been in over the last two years.”

‘Minimal effect’ on NZ
On the other hand, Bishop said yesterday’s announcement was undoubtedly good news for the grounded New Zealanders who would be excited to once again be able to see their friends and whānau here.

Sir David said the changes announced yesterday would only have a “minimal effect” on New Zealand’s situation.

“The impact of this on the progress of our epidemic in New Zealand will be very small, really quite slight. The fact is that we’ve got thousands of new cases occurring every day … the number of people turning up at the airport who are infected at the moment it’s an average of about 10 a day.

“That number will go up, of course, with more people coming into New Zealand, but it will have a minimal effect on our epidemic.”

The government has asked the advisory group to now review the role of vaccine passes and mandates for the future.

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Education Minister Chris Hipkins has warned that nearly every New Zealand school and early childhood centre will have contact with covid-19 in the next few weeks.

He told students at Mana College in Porirua today that one in five schools were already managing cases among students or staff but they were well prepared.

“We’re now up to one in five schools [which] have covid-19 cases in them and that’s going to just continue to increase from here,” he said.

“We expect in the next few weeks that just about every school, every early childhood service potentially is going to end up coming into contact with covid-19 as it spreads more rapidly throughout the community. That is now going to happen,” he said.

His comments came as the Ministry of Health reported an almost doubling of new community cases to 12,011, with five further deaths — the highest number in a single day taking the total to 61.

Yesterday’s number was 6137 cases.

In a statement, the Ministry of Health said 8223 of the positive results came from Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs), while 3807 were PCR tests.

There are currently 237 people in hospital with the coronavirus, including three in intensive care.

92% of students vaccinated
Hipkins said 92 percent of secondary students were fully vaccinated, the government had 42 million facemasks on order or in the country for schools, and it was expecting 5000 air purifiers for rooms with poor ventilation.

He also said schools might get easier access to rapid antigen tests after two large orders arrived in the next two weeks.

Currently the tests were a last resort for teachers who were isolating and whose schools could not find enough teachers to safely supervise children who could not be at home, such as the children of essential workers.

“In another week or two we will have a greater supply of rapid antigen tests in the country and at that point we may be able to say actually we can be a bit more generous than that and we can provide tests in a few more circumstances than that including for what we call surveillance which is just to give you reassurance that it’s not out there,” Hipkins said.

Auckland Secondary Principals Association president Steve Hargreaves said that could make a big difference as the pandemic bites.

“That’ll help keep schools open.

“Schools are having to roster year levels home and children are having to learn remotely because so many staff are tied up as close contacts, family members have test positive but they’re still well, they’ve been able to isolate successfully at home and if we can keep those teachers in schools through the use of rapid antigen tests, that’ll be good for our children.”

After-school sport
Hipkins also promised to clarify the rules around unvaccinated children’s participation in after-school sport and cultural activities.

The Education Ministry’s website said there were no limits on curriculum-related activities like PE classes, but extra-curricular events like team training at schools must be limited to 25 people if any were unvaccinated and 100 if all were vaccinated.

Hipkins said that was not the government’s intention.

“Some schools are interpreting something like a kapa haka rehearsal after school hours or sports after school hours as being included in the guidance.

“We’d never intended for that to be the case so we’re clarifying that so to make it clear that if you’re participating in a school-organised activity, that includes sports, kapa haka, those other cultural events, the vaccine requirement will not apply,” he said.

The minister’s office and the ministry were unable to confirm details and Hargreaves said that was a shame, because he had unvaccinated students ready to play sport tomorrow.

“It’s really sad because we don’t want to exclude any children from these great extra-curricular opportunities but we’ve been following the guidelines around events, gatherings and those size limits and of course College Sport Auckland has its rule around needing to be vaccinated to comply with those rules and that’s blocked a few kids from playing and the sooner we can get this tidied up the better,” he said.

More detail needed
School Sport New Zealand chief executive Mike Summerell said he wanted to see more detail but allowing more unvaccinated children to play sport would be good.

“We welcome the news. It’s been a divisive and difficult time for sport and for schools in terms of inter-school activity but the announcement this morning means more kids are going to have access to sport where over the last few months they haven’t so that’s a real positive,” he said.

He said the change would not be enough to return big regional sports tournaments to the calendar because they involved more than 100 people.

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Covid-19 will be in ‘just about every school’ soon – Hipkins https://t.co/6095x7BEfX

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) February 25, 2022

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