Could it be a Covid-19 Christmas?
Projected cases of more than 10,000 a day, Tuesday’s total almost double Monday’s
Experts believe daily Covid-19 cases could top 10,000 by Christmas as the number of cases keep climbing. The Ministry of Health yesterday reported 7487 cases of Covid-19, almost double Monday’s 3905 infections.
There were 40 virus-related deaths reported in the past week.
Yesterday was the largest percentage increase in case numbers between a Monday and Tuesday since the start of New Zealand’s Omicron outbreak at the beginning of the year.
Over a third of new cases yesterday were in Auckland, where 2637 infections were reported, the highest number in about four months.
Auckland University computer science senior lecturer Dr David Welch said this increase was not surprising given numbers had been “steadily” increasing over the last few weeks.
The seven-day rolling average of cases yesterday was 5141. Last week it was 4042 and four weeks ago the rolling average was 2988.
Welch said: “If you look back at the graph, there was a plateau in midnovember and a noticeable rise in cases since then. It is a consistent pattern of doubling every three to four weeks at the moment.”
Infections reported on Tuesdays tended to be the highest numbers in any given week, he said.
Dr Samik Datta, of Covid-19 Modelling Aotearoa, told the Herald in October that cases were decreasing as the country came out from its second wave in July, but “since then, they have been increasing slowly, at a lower rate than the start of the previous two waves, with cases concentrated in older age groups”.
Welch expected cases to peak at about 11,000 during the country’s third Covid wave. Projections from Covid-19 Modelling Aotearoa showed infection numbers could reach that level by Christmas, he said.
“If we are seeing cases double about every three weeks, we’re not very far away from the peak, it would happen before Christmas.”
Welch said the rise in cases now was being driven by a number of new variants which had a transmission advantage due to mutations on the virus’ spike protein. These variants had superseded older strains as
people developed immunity from past infections or vaccinations.
Current cases were dominated by a collection of subvariants, including BQ.1.1 and BA.2.75, he said, where just a few weeks ago BA.5 was the dominant strain.
“[New cases] are mainly coming from reinfections, about half of cases are, and that’s the big thing at the moment,” Welch said.
Meanwhile, there were 398 people in hospital with the virus as of midnight Monday, down 418 on Sunday.
Welch said while the country faced a “fairly” high prevalence of Covid-19 in the community it was important for people to remain vigilant
about avoiding infection. Businesses hosting large events in particular needed to have measures in place to reduce transmission.
All main Covid-19 protections — the traffic light system, vaccine mandates and most mask requirements — were dropped in September, which Welch said made it more important for people to know what they needed to do to stay safe.
“We know the environments Covid spreads in easily, those are crowded indoor environments. Businesses hosting large events need to remain cognisant of those measures: mask-wearing, testing, opening windows and monitoring CO2 levels.