Numbers in hospital in South plunging

THE number of people in hospital in the South who have Covid19 has plunged in the past week, providing a muchneeded easing of the workload of clinicians, especially in rural hospitals.

Yesterday, there were just 17 people in hospital who had the pandemic disease in Otago and Southland, whereas on Tuesday there were 42.

Of those 17, 10 were in Dunedin and five were in Southland, figures well within the the capacity of the dedicated Covid wards at each hospital.

There were two patients in Gore Hospital, which a fortnight ago had aquarter of its 20 beds occupied by Covid patients, and one in Lakes.

The decline in hospitalisations is matched by the dropoff in daily reported Covid19 cases.

Yesterday there were 208 new cases in Otago and Southland, the lowest week day daily total since February 22, right at the start of when a wave of Omicron variants of Covid19 started to sweep across the South Island.

The sevenday rolling average of new cases in Otago and Southland was 249: a week ago it was 322.

Active case numbers in most regions were also continuing to fall.

Dunedin was down almost 100 active cases, from 812 to 714, while Invercargill was down 70 cases, from 330 to 280.

Southland, Gore, Central Otago and Clutha all reported small drops but Queenstown Lakes (up 23) and Waitaki (up six) bucked the regional trend.

Nationally, the Ministry of Health reported 3805 new cases of Covid19 yesterday, 735 fewer than Thursday’s total.

It also announced that 16 people had died who had been Covidpositive at the time, one of whom was from Southern.