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Tuesday's Covid-19 update: 15 new cases, all linked; all cases from Monday now linked; 22 in hospital, with four in ICU

Tuesday's Covid-19 update: 15 new cases, all linked; all cases from Monday now linked; 22 in hospital, with four in ICU

Tuesday update:

The Ministry of Health is reporting 15 new Covid cases in the community - all in Auckland.

That follows 33 cases on Monday, 20 cases on Sunday and 23 on Saturday and brings the total in this outbreak to 970.

Of the current community cases, 22 cases are in hospital, with four in ICU - all requiring ventilation. 

Of the latest 15 cases, Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said they were all linked and all household contacts - from five households.

And Bloomfield said that all 33 of the cases from Monday had now been linked.

Of the 33 cases reported on Monday, eight were infectious in the community.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was again urging people to get vaccinated and she announced that six buses, later to expand to 12 would be hitting the streets in Auckland with mobile vaccination services from Thursday.

She said there was capacity to give 220,000 doses in Auckland this week.

"There's nothing holding us back..."

She said if 130,000 Aucklanders who had not yet received a jab all got themselves the first jab this week, it would mean 80% of Auckland would have had at least one jab.

Bloomfield was urging continued high levels of testing.

"High levels of testing will help get Auckland out of lockdown as planned and to stay out."

This is the Ministry's Covid update release:

Cases  
Number of new community cases 15
Number of new cases identified at the border Two
Location of new cases Auckland
Location of community cases (total) Auckland 953 (382 of whom have recovered); Wellington 17 (12 of whom have recovered)
Number of community cases (total) 970 (in current community outbreak)
Cases infectious in the community Eight (26%) of yesterday’s cases have exposure events
Cases in isolation throughout the period they were infectious 23 (74%) of yesterday’s cases
Cases epidemiologically linked All 15 are household contacts
Cases to be epidemiologically linked Zero of today’s cases
*Cases epidemiologically linked (total) 942 (in current cluster) (10 unlinked)
Number of sub-clusters Nine epidemiologically linked subclusters. The two largest subclusters are the Mangere church group: 381; and Birkdale social network cluster: 77.
There are nine epidemiologically unlinked subclusters.
Cases in hospital 22 (total): North Shore (4); Auckland (8); Middlemore (10)
Cases in ICU or HDU Four
Confirmed cases (total) 3,610 since pandemic began
*Historical cases, since 1 Jan 2021 (total) 142 out of 1,792 since 1 Jan 2021
*Contacts  
Number of active contacts being managed (total) 1,242
Percentage who have received an outbound call from contact tracers (to confirm testing and isolation requirements) 89%
Percentage with at least one test result 85%
Locations of interest  
Locations of interest (total) 133 (as at 10am 14 September)
Tests  
Number of tests (total) 3,158,224
Number of tests total (last 24 hours) 9,279
Tests rolling average (last 7 days) 12,735
Tests in Auckland (last 24 hours) 7,823
Testing centres in Auckland 22
*Wastewater  
Wastewater detections One sample from Pukekohe detected the COVID-19 virus. Further tests are underway
COVID-19 vaccine update  
Vaccines administered to date (total) 4,380,953; 1st doses: 2,897,385; 2nd doses: 1,483,568
Vaccines administered yesterday (total) 54,877; 1st doses: 34,145; 2nd doses: 20,732
Mâori 1st doses: 269,506; 2nd doses: 129,609
Pacific Peoples 1st doses: 174,961; 2nd doses: 89,576
NZ COVID-19 tracer  
Registered users (total) 3,213,919
Poster scans (total) 356,409,054
Manual diary entries (total) 16,217,756
Poster scans in 24 hours to midday yesterday 2,145,540

New cases identified at the border

Arrival date From Via Positive test day/reason Managed isolation/quarantine location
9 September Serbia and Montenegro United Arab Emirates Day 3 routine Auckland
 10 September United Kingdom United Arab Emirates Day 2 / routine Auckland

*Linked cases

The total unlinked cases is of the cases reported within the past 14 days. The remainder of cases are now older than 14 days and have been closed. It is important to note that no onward transmission has occurred from these cases.

*Historical cases

Five previously reported historical cases had a health status of ‘not recovered. These has been updated in our systems and have now been added to the historical case count, which is why the number has increased.

*Contacts

We now have 1,242 contacts under active management. This is a change from reporting total contacts across the whole outbreak. The number of contacts under active management has fallen considerably over the past two weeks, as the majority of our contacts had exposures more than 18 days ago and have been closed.

*Wastewater

Health officials are aware of two recently recovered cases, who were released from quarantine on 30 August and 4 September who live in the same area as the latest detection. Further investigations are being carried out.

Testing reminder

It’s pleasing to see testing numbers up yesterday.

Testing around New Zealand, and especially in Auckland, remains an essential part of our response to this outbreak. We want to find cases and testing provides confidence for understanding the extent of any spread of COVID-19.

Workers who have been invited to have a voluntary one-off asymptomatic COVID-19 test are able to return to work while they wait for their test results as they are not symptomatic.  p

There is a focus on health sector workers from district health boards, primary care and community health providers, as well as some Government agencies, emergency services, supermarket operators, supply chain, post and logistics, petrol stations and dairies, transport operators and some local council workers.

These groups of workers are being contacted and asked  to go to their local Community Testing Centre, and for a few organisations we are providing on-site testing.  

For the remainder of today and tomorrow, a pop-up testing site has opened at the Gull service station at Hampton Downs.

We are continuing to remind people across Auckland to get tested if you have symptoms, especially if you live in and around Mt Eden, Massey, Favona, Ôtara, Papatoetoe, Mângere and Manurewa.

We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment.

Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.

66 Comments

Well that's a good day. Maybe, just maybe, another week will do the trick. 

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7

Jacinda made a point to say that by next week, they're expecting that 80% of Aucklanders will have had at least 1 dose of vaccine. She also encouraged people who had vaccines booked for October, to move them forwards to this week, as there are 90,000 slots available on the website at present, in addition to walk-in (or drive-thru) sites that don't require a booking.

I suspect this probably played into their "in principal" decision to move to level 3 next Tuesday.

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7

There's some lag though. I can't move my second up (yet) because it hasn't been three weeks since my first. But yes 80% first would be a much better place to be.

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2

Delay your second to about 6 weeks to 2 months. There's some evidence of the efficacy suggests that a gap between the first and second needs to be bigger.

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5

Was it 80% of all Aucklanders, or 80% of eligible Aucklanders, I would be surprised in the former based on the nationwide stats, though there isn't a good breakdown by region. 0-12 year olds aren't eligible, make up about 10% of the population, are low risk but are still potential carriers.

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0

Must be 80% of eligible (12+). 

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4

It'll be those eligible, not total pop.

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4

Aye, good indeed. Lot riding on the next six days, but at least the start is in the right  direction. It is up to each and all of us now,  vaccinate, keep the wolf from the door.

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5

And kiwibank site is still down....

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4

The media in NZ are beyond useless.

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6

Business is tough enough for people out there able to work without a dysfunctional banking platform 

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4

If it was just a DDoS attack it'd probably be up again by now. I wonder if it's more serious? Their spokesman is declining to comment apparently and has done so for a few days.

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3

Off topic but it looks like the banks are being hit again

https://downdetector.co.nz/

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3

Dr Bloomfield just said that they've seen 16% of people (household contacts) testing positive on their day 12 tests.

He didn't say it, but that likely explains part of the 33 spike yesterday.

Edit: he just said the latest data shows that in the cases amongst people who are eligible to be vaccinated (12 years+), 78% of cases were unvaccinated, 18% had 1 vaccination and only 4% had two vaccinations.

In other words, vaccinations make a big difference in stopping people from being infected - I know some people in the comments section had been asking for this statistic, so there it is.

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9

Oh, what a relief to have you waste no time to spread the info wide and far! What would we do without being 'Lanthanised' daily...? Death and misery being the only other option! 

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That was quite an out of proportion response CT

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I don't bother responding to people whose only recourse is to attempt to insult me.

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Whats going on here Lanthanide?? Public Health England report

see page 18

SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation (publishing.service.gov.uk)

For the period of February 1 through August 2 there were COVID Delta variant cases for 47,000 people who had received 2 vaccine doses, and for 151,054 people who were unvaccinated.

In the first group of vaccinated people, there were a total of 402 deaths.  In the second much larger group with more than three times unvaccinated people, there were just 253 deaths.

In other words, of the total COVID deaths 61 percent were in fully vaccinated people.

To get the death rate you divide the number of deaths by the total number of infection cases.

That gives a death rate of .86 percent among the vaccinated and .17 percent among the unvaccinated.

That is an amazing difference.  The death rate among vaccinated was just over five times greater than that for the unvaccinated.

 

hmmm

what about here?

Boys more at risk from Pfizer jab side-effect than Covid, suggests study. No conspiracy theory here, mainstream information.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-risk-from-pfizer-jab-side-effect-than-covid-suggests-study

sounds safe

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10

Do you think I'm a PR representative of public health england or something?

The death rate among vaccinated was just over five times greater than that for the unvaccinated.

Ok, and are the underlying demographics for the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations identical? Yes, or no? If no, how do they differ, and how do those differences influence death rates for those infected by COVID?

sounds safe

Yip, science at work. Good to see it, eh?

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"are the underlying demographics for the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations identical? Yes, or no?"

 

Funny how you neglected to ask this of the figures you quoted above

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I'm just repeating what Dr Bloomfield said. Nothing more, nothing less.

You specifically presented information and asked me to comment on it, for some reason. So I did.

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3

You are a perfectly conforming, unquestioning citizen.

It's interesting to understand how you interpret facts that do not conform to the narrative you have ingested, without question.

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First thanks for sharing the report it was very informative. Reading the table you mention, for people over 50 who very double jabbed and ended up in hospital with Delta, there has been a 1.8% death rate VS over 50 years old unvaccinated who ended up in hospital with Delta who had a death rate of 5%. This is a huge difference. 

Also, for under 50 years group, your chance of going to hospital with Dleta and needing emergency care was 2% for vaccinated people compared to 4% for unvaccinated. A similar statsitics is for people who needed ICU etc (the risk is doubled for unvaccinated group). For older folk the risk factor is 4! you would be four times more likely to need ICU if you are over 50 and unvaccinated than you would be if you are double jabbed.

 

This is great evidence of effectiveness of vaccination in general, keeping in mind that UK has used a less effective vaccine. 

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The UK has used 3 different vaccines with a 4th coming.  Could the effectiveness be due to multiple vaccines being used?

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no problem

"Reading the table you mention, for people over 50 who very double jabbed and ended up in hospital with Delta, there has been a 1.8% death rate VS over 50 years old unvaccinated who ended up in hospital with Delta who had a death rate of 5%. "

Indeed - The reverse therefore holding true for the under 50 death rate

Interestingly 1 dose outdoes both measures ... which means there is likely noise in the data

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1

you might want to factor in the vaccination ratio for this population and then add in the age demographics - Fail.

 

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Delta seems to be a sneaky little bastard. China is reporting dealing with a case that didn't become evident until after 21 days of quarantine and 9 negative tests! This guy returned from Singapore. He had been released from quarantine when he got the symptoms, and investigations only point to him as being the index case.

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Wow. We're screwed.

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Lathanide, the percentages that you have quoted are for how many cases in total or the period of time from which those percentages are calculated?

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I more or less repeated what Bloomfield said. He didn't give much in the way of details. You could watch the press conference on youtube.

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My understanding at present on the research that has been presented so far is that, the viral loads peak and timelines  between an infected individual , vaccinated or unvaccinated. are similar. That is they can infect others equally . You have provided a study of 161 individuals yesterday that suggests otherwise. That is fine. Our views differ 

You state today  'In other words, vaccinations make a big difference in stopping people from being infected ' Yet without the timeline and only being provided percentages, and knowing just 12 days ago 75 percent of the general population were either unvaccinated or one dose, surely the data or interpretation would be skewed in one direction without the details of the hard numbers and dependent on the timeline of vaccinations  among a myriad of other factors. For example  New Zealand has approx 35000 in aged care facilities including my dear mother, a very high percentage were "early"  double vaxed and would be extremely unlikely to infect others by roaming  the community as they are continuously locked up  

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Again, just more or less repeating what Bloomfield said, you can watch the press conference yourself. He said it was evidence that the vaccines were helping people from becoming infected.

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2

I think we're going to see First Dose dip lower than Second Dose per day soon.

Those who are keen to be vaxxed will have done so soon and overall daily numbers will continue to decrease.

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Overall daily numbers will increase once that bulge of first-dosers who got vaxxed 2-3 weeks ago are due for their 2nd dose at 6 weeks.

At that point 2nd doses will definitely outstrip 1st, but the overall daily numbers will be increasing around that time.

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Possibly already happening. Was ~90k/day, ~550k/week. Now down closer to 60k/day, even with the extra supply meaning extra bookings available. 

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It's going to be an interesting case study to watch the outcome of the Wanaka duo, both in how it will be handled by their PR team in an attempt to salvage their reputations,  and how it will be handled by the authorities so as to not undermine public commitment to following lockdown rules.

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They were confused. They went to bale some hay but ended up on bail. Scum.

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2

helps having a mother who is high up, should get off with a fine and diversion 

they were unlucky to be caught there are hundreds of aucklanders that fled in level 4 not to mention the students that only got a warning when caught. maybe it had something to do with attitude as to why they were charged and not  formally warned

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3

Sounds like she's pretty much abandoned him from the statement she released! 

It's all a bit awkward. He's a 35 year old man responsible for his actions, not her naughty kiddo. At any rate sounds like anyone associated with the couple are sh*ing themselves. I would not want to be the girlfriend in her current workplace, I suspect she's not feeling very welcome.

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1

From what can ascertain  from unofficial channels, one family concerned could be considered as a bit unorthodox. There is though the element of legal qualifications. It would be immorality itself if those that are qualified in our  law, are sworn to uphold the jurisdiction of it, could use it themselves to remain anonymous, when they break it. That would undermine a lot more than just the public’s confidence in covid criteria being implemented.

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4

Laws don't apply to the elites of society. At worst they'll incur a small financial penalty. They're not going to do time in the clink because they can afford classy lawyers and mummy can throw her weight around.

It's a good test case for the justice system as to whether it can avoid leniency and prosecute it's own.

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3

Quite right.

I watched "The Judge" on Netflix last night (Robert Downer jnr; himself one who managed to somewhat recover from transgression) and the underlying premise was - previous decisions handed-down would now come under scrutiny/appeal, and any future ruling would be subject to the same.

It will be a good watch in real life, as the Netflix movie was.

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1

Time line still doesn't quite equate. You need the 80% on their second dose not the first and with a couple of weeks in between that delays things. Best case is still level 4 until 1st October and a very tight level 3 after that which is still really level 4 anyway. Even level 2 now in the regions is still not the old level 2 as the paranoia has really set in this time around.

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1

Best case is still level 4 until 1st October

Best case is actually moving to level 3 on Tuesday 21st September at 11:59pm as indicated by the government.

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5

Best case was about 3 weeks ago moving down to level 3...

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0

Public Health England

SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation in England

For the period of February 1 through August 2 there were COVID Delta variant cases for 47,000 people who had received 2 vaccine doses, and for 151,054 people who were unvaccinated.

In the first group of vaccinated people, there were a total of 402 deaths.  In the second much larger group with more than three times unvaccinated people, there were just 253 deaths.

In other words, of the total COVID deaths 61 percent were in fully vaccinated people.

Comparison of viral load Ct by vaccination status

In the NHS Test and Trace (NHSTT) case data, the mean and median lowest Ct values for all cases with Delta, where Ct data are available, since the 14 June 2021 are similar, with a median of 17.8 for unvaccinated and 18.0 for those with 2 vaccine doses (Figure 12). This means that whilst vaccination may reduce an individual’s overall risk of becoming infected, once they are infected there is limited difference in viral load (and Ct values) between those who are vaccinated and unvaccinated. Given they have similar Ct values, this suggests limited difference in infectiousness.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uplo…

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2

In other words, of the total COVID deaths 61 percent were in fully vaccinated people.

Look up bayes theorem which largely explains this, once you take into account the underlying likelihood of death amongst the groups, aside from their vaccination status. Simply saying "vaccinated" and "unvaccinated" is not helpful, because it is likely that the vaccinated group contains many people that are at a much higher risk of death to begin with than the unvaccinated group, so it's not surprising that even with vaccines, deaths amongst that group are high. They'd be even higher still if they weren't vaccinated.

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"Also, saying "vaccinated" and "unvaccinated" is not helpful" ...

 

NO Green pass for you then

 

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I can quote things you write out of context and add "witty" replies, too. But I don't because it's a waste of time.

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6

Shouldn't Wānaka and Queenstown be in temporary lockdown after the recent breach from Auckland? [Link]

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0

Only if they were COVID positive, or believed to be close contacts of a COVID case.

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4

I believe that they have been described as being of low risk. That adjective could be used to describe a lot of other features about them too, I suggest.

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2

yet today there is a sign of covid in  pukekohe waste water and guess where the couple come from, just hope for the south island its a rogue result and they have not taken it on a ski holiday with them

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1

More likely from the two recovered people living in the area, we hope.

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1

My Mum got vaccinated and her pastor's wife thinks she will now shed virus on the rest of the congregation. You can't make this stuff up.

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It’s not new. They have been amongst us forever. Recall years ago, time of 707s & DC8s, senior woman one ahead at check in counter, asking where she went to get her parachute. (rest easy it wasn’t in NZ) 

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1

That was an old joke from the period wasn't it - you know you might be in trouble when you see the captain come on board, kneel and genuflect, then stow his parachute just inside the flight deck door.

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True but just short of midnight, airport depth of Sth America, airline of obscure identity, and the woman in question appears to be a sincere but very strange too, missionary of quite some learning & faith, asks that question, it could have slightly unnerving,  had I not had then nerves of steel(or fortified actually) . Mind you, the religious are not all above inflicting their humour on pagans of course.

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1

God works in mysterious ways don't you know?

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Back in the old days when they were using live oral polio vaccine there was a slight risk of infection from shedding. Perhaps that's where they got the idea from.

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They're out there. I got warned about "all the miscarriages, and the stillbirths, so many stillbirths" resulting from the vaccine before I went to get my first shot while pregnant.

It's next level hysteria and usually I would generally just avoid having people that silly in my life. Unfortunately they're acquired family.

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1

Despite our pretensions, humans have really evolved very little over the past few thousand years.

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We are very close to 70% to 80% eligible having their 1st shot – and in a general sense it seems that at 70% to 80% fully vaccinated is something of a target in terms of loosening up various restrictions.

Those getting their first shot over the next few days to take us to 70 or 80% I imagine won’t get their second shot until the end of October.

So are we in some sort of limbo until the end of October – continuing to hope that this current outbreak is eliminated or severely contained in the meantime?

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I don't think that Auckland can take another month of level 4 lockdown, expect level 3 in 1 to 2 weeks time and that will last another month anyway.

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2

From the so called 'elite' down to the strugglers on benefits, this country is sick, full of self interest and self entitlement. Witness latest debacle with the ' Wanaka visitors'.

 

 

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