South clear of cases for 29 days

ONCE the epicentre of New Zealand’s Covid19 outbreak, the South experienced a milestone at the weekend.

Yesterday marked day 29 of no new cases in the Southern District Health Board, meaning the area has made it through two full cycles of the virus without any new positive tests.

As of yesterday, it had just one active case.

The milestone was described as ‘‘absolutely significant’’ by WellSouth chief executive Andrew SwansonDobbs.

General practices and communitybased assessment centres (CBAC) had completed 14,000 test swabs as of Saturday.

‘‘I think we’ve done a lot of testing, and that’s helped, with public health leadership, protect this community,’’ he said.

‘‘I think it’s been phenomenal, I really do, how the health system down here’s responded.’’

The South was the main centre of the Covid19 outbreak in its early days, as two significant clusters formed in Queenstown and Bluff.

New case numbers started to dwindle in midApril.

‘‘I think the public has done an amazing job, so everyone needs a pat on the back,’’ Mr SwansonDobbs said.

New case numbers remained low nationwide over the weekend.

There were no new cases on Saturday and one new case, linked to the Rosewood cluster in Christchurch, announced yesterday.

Yesterday’s case was a Canterbury boy aged between 1 and 4, according to the Ministry of Health.

The country’s total number of cases was 1499, and 96% of those were recovered.

The low number of cases would also feed into decisions concerning testing centres.

Queenstown’s CBAC had already been mothballed, as GPs were able to cope with the number of tests required.

‘‘The numbers are still pretty high going through our CBAC in Dunedin and Invercargill, so we don’t think we can shut them down.

‘‘When we get through this next period of people wanting to be tested, and we get back to some form of normality, it will be good to see we can shut down the CBAC and encourage people, if they need to be tested, to go to their GP.’’

While domestic travel was allowed again under Level 2, Mr SwansonDobbs said the risk of the virus being brought into the area from outside was low, as long as people followed the rules.

The next challenge for primary health providers would be winter and the onset of flu season.

There was evidence to suggest fewer respiratory issues were plaguing the community in general, due to the Covid19 lockdown.

‘‘Now that we are Level 2 and out and about and people are back at work or back into socialising, there is a risk that we have those bugs again in the system, but I’m hopeful that we get through winter without too much of a problem.’’