The Ministry of Health is reporting another 21 community Covid cases, all in Auckland. In addition there's a further case that has yet to be either identified as a community or border case.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern confirmed that a deal had been struck to get more Pfizer vaccine to keep up with the demand between now and when big shipments arrive in October. Ardern said as the deal - which involved more than one country - was still being finalised, she could not give any more detail yet.
Arden said currently there were 682,000 vaccine doses in the country.
The latest case numbers follow 20 new cases in each of the past three days.
This takes the total for this outbreak to 841, with 17 of these in Wellington and the rest Auckland.
Arden and Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield gave the latest update.
Bloomfield said there were now 39 Covid cases in hospital, with six in ICU, four of which were requiring ventilation.
Bloomfield said of the 20 cases reported on Monday, just four had been infectious in the community.
The number of cases in the latest outbreak that were still regarded as 'unlinked' had now dropped to 24 from 33 on Monday.
Ardern said the negotiations to get extra vaccine supply had been "complex".
There were over 66,000 vaccinations on Monday.
This is the Ministry of Health's daily update:
| Cases | |
| Number of new community cases | 21. There’s one additional case which is yet to be classified as either a community case or a border case. This is being investigated. |
| Number of new cases identified at the border | Zero |
| Location of new cases | Auckland |
| Location of community cases (total) | Auckland 824 (138 of whom have recovered); Wellington 17 (eight of whom have recovered) |
| Number of community cases (total) | 841 (in current community outbreak). Note one of the previously reported cases has been reclassified as a duplicate. |
| Cases infectious in the community | Four (20%) of yesterday’s cases have exposure events – all of which predated the request to isolate. |
| Cases in isolation throughout the period they were infected | 16 (76%) of yesterday’s cases |
| Cases epidemiologically linked | 20 of today’s cases |
| Cases to be epidemiologically linked | One from today’s cases |
| Cases epidemiologically linked (total) | 817 (in current cluster) (24 unlinked) |
| Number of sub-clusters | Eight epidemiologically linked subclusters. The two largest subclusters are the Mangere church group: 368; and Birkdale social network cluster: 76. There are nine epidemiologically unlinked subclusters. |
| Cases in hospital | 39 (total): North Shore (7); Auckland (17) Middlemore (15); |
| Cases in ICU or HDU | 6 |
| Confirmed cases (total) | 3,813 since pandemic began |
| Historical cases, since 1 Jan 2021 (total) ** | 130 out of 1,639 since 1 Jan 2021 |
| Contacts | |
| Number of contacts identified (total) * | 37,971 |
| Percentage who have received outbound call from contact tracers (to confirm testing and isolation requirements) | 87% |
| Percentage with at least one test result | 91% |
| Locations of interest | |
| Locations of interest (total) | 114 (as at 10am 7 September) |
| Tests | |
| Number of tests (total) | 3,069,348 |
| Number of tests total (last 24 hours) | 7,255 |
| Tests rolling average (last 7 days) | 12,131 |
| Tests in Auckland (last 24 hours) | 5,852 |
| Testing centres in Auckland | 22 |
| Wastewater | |
| Wastewater detections | No unexpected detections in the past 24 hours. |
| COVID-19 vaccine update | |
| Vaccines administered to date (total) | 3,958,607; 1st doses: 2,611,510; 2nd doses: 1,347,097 |
| Vaccines administered yesterday (total) | 66,310; 1st doses: 44,641; 2nd doses: 21,669 |
| Mâori | 1st doses: 239,661; 2nd doses: 118,866 |
| Pacific Peoples | 1st doses: 154,196; 2nd doses: 81,272 |
| NZ COVID-19 tracer | |
| Registered users (total) | 3,160,760 |
| Poster scans (total) | 340,588,751 |
| Manual diary entries (total) | 15,564,652 |
| Poster scans in 24 hours to midday yesterday | 907,213 |
*This denominator may fluctuate due to additional contacts being identified and/or the Ministry excluding records, for instance duplicates, following further contact tracing investigations.
**A previously reported case, reported on 18 August, has now been deemed as historical.
There may be some delays in providing data in some instances. On these occasions, we will use data from the day before and clearly note this.
85 Comments
new cases flatlining. more vaccine supply in the offing. if vaccination continues at the current rate then the target of completion by the end of the year will obviously come forward, less than three months hence undoubtedly, which is not far away at all then. so should we not know by now what the above target actually is and what exactly will happen when it is met. New Zealanders have been markedly compliant and understanding to making lockdowns effective. Given that the majority of them were left unprotected by vaccination at the start of this Delta event, the government therefore owes them much gratitude for their application because anything other than that would have seen the government on the hook, at least at this point anyway. So this government now needs to let the good people of New Zealand know what happens next so that some can begin planning their lives as best as able the new normal will allow.
In Germany you wear the mask while standing at a restaurant but not while sitting and talking. If you get up to go to the toilet then you put on your mask, and take it off when you return to your table at the packed restaurant. You see the virus knows when you're sitting down, and has agreed to a truce under those circumstances. They've just changed the rules so instead of fancy FFP2 masks we can wear the normal surgical masks with all the gaps. The virus has also agreed not to take the path of least resistance around the side of the mask. So you see the masks are not a psychological opperation & useless virtue signaling device, they actually do something - they stop that pesky virus.
We don't want more Pfizer. Yeah the effectiveness looks ok at first glance, but you need booster shots every 5 minutes to keep up the effectiveness. Look at Israel which is a Pfizer experiment writ large - people are now on their 4th shot. No one has any idea of the effects of such repeated and frequent vaccination from MRNA technology.
We would be much better served if the government could deliver on its other contracts (Jansen and Novavaxx) which are based on more proven approaches. I personally am not touching the Pfizer vaccine with a barge pole, but would happily look at the other ones on the menu.
What do you think the chances are that we look back in 20 years and it turns out the first vaccine developed was the best one? Pretty unlikely i would have thought.
I think the Moderna vaccine is meant to still be more effective. Some of these "second generation" vaccines are whole virus or at least the whole spike so minor mutations are much more likely to leave something the immune system can recognise. Unlike the RNA vaccines that just picked some of the parts of the spike.
The is data and studies that the recovered are much less likely to catch the virus than the vaccinated so in theory better vaccines are possible.
I've done my research and Pfizer would be my informed choice of all the options available. Which is convenient. Agree it's a shame there aren't other options for different people but your comment comes across like people who choose Pfizer are doing so because they don't know any better or simply have no other choice, which is not the case.
... I missed the 1 p.m. sermon from the Pulpit of Struth ; but have garnered the impression that multiple deals are being done with undisclosed countries to provide an uncertain number of Pfizer doses at some time in the future at an indeterminate cost ... .
Well ... we'll all sleep better tonight knowing that , won't we , boys & girls ....
I predicted back in August that Auckland would be in Level 4 for the whole of September. Case numbers should really be down in single digits by now. Also I stated like a year ago they should have built a dedicated MIQ facility. You need a huge MIQ facility to try and contain Delta, no point putting more than one suspected case in a room with another because they then both end up with it. Still think this is almost impossible to stop, we simply don't have the infrastructure to cope with it. All the lockdown is doing is buying us time to try and get the whole of Auckland vaccinated. The Fear Factor is working out well in the vaccine uptake.
I can see this going on through October at least with level 3 if not 4 still. Aucklanders compliance to level 4 is on the wane as there are noticeably more cars on the road than at the start of lockdown. Both my neighbours aren't taking it seriously - one neighbour's teenage son has had his mate round a few times and other neighbour went out for day trip somewhere on Sunday with the whole family.
A big part of it is that the government has relaxed the rules a lot, trading in level 4 is now more like what level 3 was the first time.
First level 4, businesses could only sell items to other essential businesses.
Now, any business that can operate safely at level 4 can sell 'essential' items to the public.
Sounds problematic, theres' been such a blurred line on what essential is.This relaxed approach is what's got us into this mess, it's a shame the govt will keep us in lockdown longer with another subpar effort.
Ps. Seems like all your Covid calls have been wrong Lathanide...
Im at my work, alone, dropping off stuff to the courier, all completely contactless. I dont see any risk in this at all.
If half arsing involves saving jobs and businesses then Im all for it. Please dont retort with everyone is going to die, because it is very evident they arent.
so we have 10 days supply of vaccines, with cobbled together orders arriving sometime in October, no date given, still in discussions.....
But hey over 75% of eligible (thats over 16 i think) NZ'ers have EITHER been vaccinated or booked for one, whoopee.... booked for a shot in 3 months time, ICU here i come.
This lockdown is not ending any time soon for Auckland
Why would you think you will end up in ICU ? Taken on face value the total lockdown is an overreaction. So far one death from someone in her 90's with underlying health conditions. I suspect that many people are rating their chances against Covid without the vaccination as quite high. Its a personal calculation in which you weigh up all the risks.
1 death covid-related out of 841 official cases. Who knows how many have caught the bug but haven't been confirmed. Let's just say 1000 people have been infected.
1 death out of 1000 = 0.1%
And this in a cohort with a relatively high risk profile.
It's hardly black death is it?
This should be the last lockdown.
As I have said before, tighten border and MIQ, and perhaps go to alert level 2.5 at most to mitigate outbreaks.
But no more level 3 or 4.
They have ramped up ICU surge capacity significantly - but that can only be done temporarily as proper ICU care requires a lot more specialist ICU trained doctors and senior nurses - which are impossible to simply “ramp up” in 1.5 year. Trained doctors can’t simply be bought off the shelf.
Ramped up significantly? Not even the government is saying that. Damn sure they would if they could though. Go and have a listen to the lame and evasive answer by Minister Hipkins in parliament to that of Dr Reti asking how much ICU capacity has increased since Covid arrived in NZ.
I appreciate that, but perhaps if we had had a bit more fat in the system we could have adjusted better. Instead, the system is totally under resourced and overrun. That is on successive governments.
On a related note, how do we cope when Wellington has a massive earthquake, or Auckland has an eruption. Either event would have much greater implications for our hospitals than the Christchurch quake did.
Natural disasters, and pandemics, are exactly the reasons why you need some redundant capacity in the system.
But that's right, we only think about the short term and 'just in time' in little ole NZ...
Lange’s government ushered in the sale of state assets and the corporatisation of government departments into SOEs. Health has not been adequately handled by any government as far as I can recall. Even Helen Clark and Michael Cullen were health ministers at one time and pretty ineffective about it too. In my opinion the best health minister on offer of late has been Annette King and that was because she had the pragmatism and intelligence to listen to the clinicians at least equal to the bureaucrats. The national government that preceded this one certainly was one of the poorer performers in this portfolio but they were not unique. Quite a few of those that comment here accuse you of being a Labour party plant. Have tended to give you the benefit of the doubt but really your above comment is intemperate and finally nails your colours to the mast. Suggest also avoid the slips into first person plural when you get agitated about defending your governments actions.
both the major parties have over seen the down grading of our health system with policy after policy, from high population growth and not growing the health sector to keep up, training people to head off overseas because there is no pathways for them here instead importing people to fill the gaps. , the bureaucracy in our hospitals is the biggest growth department they have had over the last twenty years
That was shockingly cringe. Eulogies and write ups over a single death, condolences from the PM. How many have died from other causes since the outbreak started?
A 90+ year old dying is never a "tragedy", it's called a good innings. In fact the state of extreme old age is the ultimate "underlying health condition"!
Well to try answer that question I looked up the death rate for NZ from the official stats. For the year July to June the death rates are: 2018-2019 33768, 2019-2020 33975, 2020-2021 33483. I would put those fluctuations in the vicinity of regular year on year noise.
Incidentally the official suicide rate dropped from the 2018-2019 to the 2019-2020 period which covered the first lockdown from 13.93 to 13.01 per 100k people. We haven't got the numbers for the latest period yet.
It's great we're securing more vaccines but I have a question: What does it cost to administer 1 shot? I know, we the people don't pay for it, but there's still a cost associated with producing the vaccine, selling it to NZ, shipping it to NZ setting up vaccination centres and paying the people administering the shots. It's something that I have never heard discussed.
What is the total cost (to the government) of one administered vaccine?
You make it sound like it's a choice between one or the other. Israel and some other countries seem to be having lockdowns or other restrictions despite having high vaccination rates.
I suspect that even with high vaccination rates some form of lockdown will be needed in the non elimination countries from time to time if the alternative is to have the health system be over run.
https://www.oxfam.org.nz/news-media/media-releases/vaccine-monopolies-m…
Pfizer/ BioNTech are charging their lowest reported price of USD$6.75 (NZD$9.70) to the African Union but this is still nearly 6 times more than the estimated potential production cost of this vaccine. One dose of the vaccine costs the same as Uganda spends per citizen on health in a whole year.
The highest reported price paid for Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines was paid by Israel at USD$28 (NZD$40.26) a dose – nearly 24 times the potential production cost. Some reports suggest they paid even more.
Unclear how much we pay but presumably somewhere between NZD10-NZD40 per dose.
Lets say NZD25, multiply that by 2 for both shots so NZD50 per person.
So, ballpark NZD250M to buy enough vaccine for 5M people. I don't know enough about the other costs to make any educated guess but my reckons would be at least double.
"It's better to die bravely than to live a coward."
The number of business destroyed by these sporadic lock-downs are causing real financial damages to people's lives- even generational businesses aren't spared. This is all because of a anemic vaccination roll out, failure to secure vaccines whilst touting the country is 'in the front of vaccine supply' queue.
We should stop hiding in a hole.
The only people who wants a prolonged shut down are probably doctors and nurses where their occupation is recession proof and opening up means working overtime.
Failure in public administration should not be hidden behind country-wide lock-down; success in viral replication control does not rectify failures in vaccination.
Yeah, its really unfortunate the medical miracle of these vaccines that every country in the world wanted were in short supply.
Not sure why you think NZ, which had eliminated the virus, was more deserving than other countries.
Also unemployment is around 4% and the economy is going gang busters - good growth in any time, but exceptional compared to the rest of the world.
Not exactly. By your own words yesterday elimination was never achieved in MIQ. Therefore as you went on to say covid could be lurking issuing forth from MIQ in Christchurch for example, at present at any time. Elimination was only ever as good as border security would allow and once that was breached obviously covid was no longer eliminated. That is the status in NZ today isn’t it.
The business side of your comment is absolutely true. The fallout from the current shambles will be huge, no doubt about it.
There is a real disconnect between wage/salary earners where most are unaffected, and trying to finance a business through this, with little to no help from the government. Compared to the first lockdown, govt seem relatively disinterested in keeping the economy running. It is one big blustery PR exercise.
They do seem very interested in propping up house prices though.
With willpower and resource it could have been easily achieved. The buildings needn't have been beautiful buildings. Efficient, well insulated boxes would be fine.
The buildings could have been repurposed for other things in the future.
I thought we were treating covid like a war?
Exactly and who said that this would be the last Pandemic ? Hell this one will not be finished for years. There are already 3 or 4 other mutations that have only just got going. We are one mutation away from the end of the world as you know it. Covid-19 may be a picnic in the park in 12 months time. Throwing sick people in hotels is not a long term plan.
If you were working in the construction industry, you would know that even if you had the crack team of architects, a blank cheque from the government, and the 3 most capable main contractors working together to milk the government (your and my tax dollars), you would be waiting AT LEAST 4-5 years... if you are having having a bit of luck to boot :)
So whats your point ? Basically in 4 to 5 years we will look back and say, gee we should have started the new MIQ/Hospital facility 4 or 5 years ago, gee its to late now it will not be open for another 5 years so lets continue to do nothing, how about we just waste billions in lockdowns that could have built 4 or 5 hospitals in the meantime.
I happen to agree with you! I just pointed out to the OP that these ridiculous expectations of building a major technically involved project like a hospital, and putting in place staff for it in addition to existing staff takes time no matter how much will power we possess...
some good news coming out of a study showing those that are vaccinated then ctch covid come out the other side much better off
After both a prior COVID-19 infection and two doses of Pfizer or Moderna's vaccine, some people's immune systems develop an incredible ability to respond to the virus.
Researchers call this 'superhuman immunity' or 'hybrid immunity' - these patients' immune systems can produce a lot of antibodies able to respond to different variants, as documented in multiple studies in recent months.
In one study, patients with this 'hybrid immunity' demonstrated the ability to respond to current variants of concern, non-human coronaviruses, and potentially even new variants that don't yet exist
After both a prior COVID-19 infection and two doses of Pfizer or Moderna's vaccine, some people's immune systems develop an incredible ability to respond to the virus.
Researchers call this 'superhuman immunity' or 'hybrid immunity' - these patients' immune systems can produce a lot of antibodies able to respond to different variants, as documented in multiple studies in recent months.
In one study, patients with this 'hybrid immunity' demonstrated the ability to respond to current variants of concern, non-human coronaviruses, and potentially even new variants that don't yet exist
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.