Omicronwave refuses to ebb
The Omicron tail is lingering long in the MidCentral Health district, refusing to dip to predicted double-digit numbers.
Earlier modelling had suggested that by now, daily case numbers would have settled below 100 a day and the number of hospital admissions would drop to three or four a week.
Board chief executive Kathryn Cook’s report to the district health board’s second-to-last meeting yesterday said hospital numbers had dropped from a peak of 35 down to less than 10 a day.
But yesterday, hospital numbers had crept back up to 21, and there were 348 new community cases across the district.
Covid-19 senior responsible officer Kelvin Billinghurst said staff were saddened to report another virus-related death yesterday, bringing the total number of deaths with the virus in the district to 32.
Cook said daily case numbers had peaked at 954 on March 21, 60 days after the first case appeared in the district.
She said since then, cases had shown a consistent pattern of fall, apart from on
Mondays, reflecting lower weekend reporting.
So far, more than 32,000 people, 17% of the MidCentral district’s population, had reported being Covid-19 positive.
‘‘The number of cases not reported is unknown, but suspected to be 20% or more,’’ she said.
Cook said the pandemic response continued to focus on improving Covid-19 vaccination and booster rates across the region, and also rolling out the influenza vaccine into the wintermonths, and catching up on childhood vaccinations.
She said staff were working to understand the impacts on the vaccination programme from people who had already been infected, and had to stand down for 90 days before having a vaccination or booster.
Locality hubs were working to support equitable prescribing of anti-viral medicine recentlymade available, which would be an important part of managing in future outbreaks.
Yesterday, there were 1897 active cases of Covid-19 across the MidCentral district.
There were 1037 in Palmerston North, and 350 in Manawatū. PRINTED AND DISTRIBUTED BY PRESSREADER