No new cases; Govt considers life at Level 1

WELLINGTON: There were no new Covid19 cases yesterday and directorgeneral of health Ashley Bloomfield said there were now only 22 active cases in the country.

There were no additional deaths to report, and there was one person in hospital with the virus.

There were 1841 tests conducted yesterday, taking the total number of tests to 263,156 so far.

At yesterday’s briefing, Dr Bloomfield said New Zealand was relaxing restrictions faster than other countries, including Australia, and the Government was ‘‘acutely’’ aware that Level 2 still imposed restrictions on some businesses.

Officials were examining what life under Level 1 would be like, and that would be announced at a later date.

University of Otago epidemiologist Michael Baker said in principle there was no reason foreigners should not be treated the same as returning New Zealanders, who had been allowed into the country on the condition they stay in quarantine for two weeks.

‘‘The current extreme form of management is 14day quarantine, but there is a reasonable chance that a mix of other measures could shorten that,’’ Prof Baker said.

‘‘And, of course, if we get to the point where New Zealand and other countries we are working with have achieved elimination according to a standard definition that we all adopt, that will make it much easier to imagine much more travel between countries.

‘‘The obvious place to start is Australia, which is close to elimination and possibly even ahead of New Zealand in some states.’’

He said eradication might be defined as 28 days with no new cases.

The most recent New Zealand case was reported on Friday.

On Monday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Cabinet would review the Level 2 settings on June 8 — but would not consider whether the country was ready to move to Level 1 until June 22.

If such a move were approved, New Zealanders would be given a few days’ notice before the alert level dropped. — The New Zealand Herald