Cafe queues risk virus spike

Relaxed physical distancing at coffee shops and takeaway joints could lead to a spike in coronavirus cases a week from now, health authorities warn.

Nelson Marlborough Health chief medical officer Dr Nick Baker said the Covid-19 alert level three opened a ‘‘chink in our protection’’ and it was critical people maintained the ‘‘lines of defence’’ – hand washing, distancing and staying home if unwell.

‘‘The lockdown was sort of black and white . . . You’re at home or you’re going out for very essential activities, like the supermarket or going to the doctor. Now there’s many more opportunities to get it wrong . . . Inevitably things will go wrong a bit.’’

He said it could not be ruled out that asymptomatic cases of Covid19 were now infecting others in the community, even under the heavy restrictions of level three.

‘‘There could be a small number of cases that have slipped under the radar and have only been unearthed when people start to mingle more,’’ Baker said.

‘‘This could be lurking in a small pocket of people that are in their own bubble and haven’t been sick enough to take the test, who are now breaking out of their bubble to potentially infect others.’’

The lag in showing symptoms meant New Zealand would not see the effects of post-lockdown mingling for at least a week, he said.

‘‘[The coronavirus] is an invisible enemy that moves through our community, and it’s seven days before you know where it’s been,’’ Baker said.

‘‘If you want to prevent it you have to think seven days ahead of where it’s got to, and that’s where our lockdown was so successful.’’

He said 33 days of lockdown had put New Zealand into an enviable position within the world.

‘‘If we’d let this grow at the speed that it started we’d be seeing something like 200,000 cases and 4000 deaths by now.’’

However, the top of the south was not immune to the risk of outbreak, despite going several weeks without new cases. Nelson Marlborough Health recorded a new case yesterday, in Nelson, bringing the area’s total to 49 cases of coronavirus. Forty-five of those had reportedly recovered.

Baker said rates of recovery needed to be treated with caution as there was no way to know for certain that cases had recovered.

The Ministry of Health defined a patient as recovered if they had not displayed symptoms for 48 hours and if at least 10 days had passed since their first onset of symptoms. Unlike in other countries, patients were not required to return a negative test to be defined as ‘‘recovered’’.

On Tuesday a coronavirus patient in Nelson Marlborough who had previously been classified as recovered began to show symptoms again.

What gave Baker confidence was the reduced numbers of positive tests at community-based assessment centres in Nelson and Marlborough, and the ability to contact-trace and track clusters.

He urged people to ‘‘harden our resolve, not lessen it’’ throughout alert level three.

‘‘Don’t let your distances creep,’’ he said. ‘‘Remind yourself of what 2 metres actually is – it’s quite a long distance. You want to be further away than you can spit a cherry,’’ he said.