South may face Level 4 lockdown for longer

THE South could be among the last places in New Zealand to see the lifting of the tough restrictions of the Covid19 Alert Level 4 lockdown.

The Southern District Health Board amassed 10 new cases yesterday, and directorgeneral of health Ashley Bloomfield advised the amount of cases due to community transmission was higher than previously stated.

Further, he said the Government was just now looking at how the spread of the coronavirus might indicate when lockdown restrictions could be eased.

‘‘The goal is to get the number of cases right down again, and as soon as we can.

‘‘We want to be able to release, or step down from, Alert Level 4 to Alert Level 3.

‘‘It may well be that we are not able to do that in every part of the country at the same time, as one possible scenario,’’ Dr Bloomfield said.

The SDHB area yesterday had 118 cases, still higher than anywhere else in New Zealand, including Waikato (117) and Auckland (116).

SDHB figures show the number of confirmed cases in QueenstownLakes shot up seven cases, from 38 to 45 yesterday.

Dunedin at 35 cases remained the centre with the secondmost cases in the South.

Invercargill (19), Central Otago (nine), and Southland (seven), all had an increase by one case yesterday. Clutha had three cases.

The South now had the capacity to conduct 450 tests a day — and averaged 199 tests a day over the past week, a statement from the health board last night said.

Dr Bloomfield reiterated the message at the start of the lockdown that it would be seven to 10 days after the atleast four weeks of Level 4 lockdown took effect before daily case numbers ‘‘might’’ start to decrease.

Given that day eight of the lockdown had resulted in the highest number of daily cases to date, ‘‘we’re clearly not there yet’’, he said.

Across New Zealand there were 76 new confirmed cases and 13 new probable cases (a total of 89 new cases), bringing the total number of cases in the country to 797.

All patients were stable, but the numbers included 13 in hospital and two patients in ICU. There were no additional deaths.

For the cases the Ministry of Health knew about, there was still a strong link to overseas travel — at 51% of cases.

There were also 31% of cases with strong links to known cases in New Zealand.

But while there were officially only 1% of those cases the ministry knew about that were classed as ‘‘community transmission’’, there were another 17% still being investigated.

‘‘And many of those we expect will transpire to be community transmission,’’ he said.

The Government has only recently begun widening testing criteria to beyond links with overseas travel or strong links to known cases in New Zealand.

The South is home to two of six ‘‘clusters’’ — groups of 10 or more cases — identified by the ministry.

The March 21 wedding in Bluff continued to be tied to new Covid19 infections — the number of cases linked to the wedding increased by 12, up to 34 yesterday, after adding cases 14 on Wednesday.

Queenstown’s World Hereford Conference, held from March 913, had no new cases and remained at 27 cases across New Zealand.

Health Minister David Clark declined to comment on the possible length of time the South could remain in Alert Level 4 lockdown.

‘‘We are just over one week into the Alert Level 4 restrictions. It is too early to speculate about future measures at either a national or a regional level beyond the initial four weeks,’’ he said.