Rotorua Daily Post

Covid cases will keep rising: Baker

- Jamie Morton

An epidemiolo­gist warns Covid-19 reinfectio­ns — already making up a quarter of reported cases — will keep rising as New Zealand’s latest Omicron wave pushes case counts to levels not seen in months.

But Otago University’s Professor Michael Baker adds there’s also some worrying unknowns about the impact of reinfectio­n, and is warning Kiwis to avoid another bout with a virus that’s running rampant over the festive season.

There have been 34,528 new community cases of Covid-19 in the past week and 40 deaths attributed to the virus, the Ministry of Health reported yesterday.

As at Sunday, there were 3900 reported cases, and the seven-day rolling average stood at 4926 — the highest counts seen since August.

There were also 418 people in hospital, the highest number recorded since August 21.

Reinfectio­ns accounted for about a quarter of reported cases, which reflected only a subset of New Zealand’s overall picture of Covid-19 infection. Speaking ahead of the latest release of weekly Covid-19 case numbers, Baker said reinfectio­ns would naturally account for an increasing proportion of all cases the longer the virus was able to circulate in our communitie­s.

Modellers estimate that at least two-thirds of Kiwis — and perhaps eight in 10 of us — have now had the coronaviru­s.

“Eventually, virtually all infections — except in very young children — will probably be reinfectio­ns,” Baker said.

“It’s possible there may be a tiny minority of people able to avoid infection by very rigorous efforts, or there may be others who have very powerful innate immunity, and for various reasons won’t have symptomati­c illness, and won’t get tested.”

Covid-19 modeller Dr Dion O’neale told the Herald he’d expect the rate of reinfectio­n to be “at least” as high as a quarter of all cases — and to probably increase.

Because the current wave was being driven by a mix of new subvariant­s able to dodge protection people had from prior infections, O’neale said the reinfectio­n rate would continue to climb.

Baker said researcher­s were still trying to answer critical questions around reinfectio­n. But he pointed to a major US study that found all of the negative effects of infection could occur with each reinfectio­n.

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