Confidence outbreak controlled

WELLINGTON: Health officials are confident they are on top of the community outbreak of Covid19 cases, ahead of a Cabinet meeting today to assess alert level settings, but warn cases will likely continue for several more weeks.

Two new Covid19 cases were announced yesterday — one case a 21yearold man linked to the Americold cool store group of cases and who was already in isolation as a close contact, and another woman in managed isolation.

Auckland Regional Public Health Service director William

Rainger joined Health Minister Chris Hipkins at Middlemore Hospital yesterday for the update, and told media ‘‘we can be pretty confident that we are on top of this’’.

‘‘The epidemic curve peaked about two weeks ago, it is undulating downwards.

‘‘We have had the Mt Roskill church congregation, which has given it a little spike, but the direction of travel is downwards,’’ Dr Rainger said.

‘‘So all the current clusters that we are aware of and working on, we believe we have well contained . . . but we would expect to see cases for probably another few weeks.’’

An ‘‘overwhelming’’ majority of cases were already identified through contact tracing and tested as a result of that, Dr Rainger said.

The current alert level settings (Level 2.5 for Auckland and 2 for the rest of the country) are in place until Sunday, but Prime

Minister Jacinda Ardern has said a decision will be announced before then.

Earlier yesterday Ms Ardern said the Government ‘‘will always be very cautious’’ about the timing of a potential move to Level 1.

Mr Hipkins said the Cabinet would consider not only the number of new community cases, but what was known about them.

‘‘You can have a large number of cases, but they can all be known, for example, and they can all be people who are already isolating.

‘‘Over the last couple of weeks we did see some days where we had a higher number of community cases, but they were often directly linked to one another . . . so that in itself doesn’t create a huge degree of extra anxiety.’’

Mr Hipkins and Dr Rainger stressed the need for ongoing vigilance and testing if any symptoms developed, and that anyone identified as a close contact must stay at home in isolation for the full 14 days.

‘‘This outbreak affects all parts of Auckland,’’ Mr Hipkins said.

‘‘It doesn’t matter where you live or work, please continue to take action to protect yourselves.

‘‘We cannot relax just yet.’’ — The New Zealand Herald