Auckland ‘may be near peak’

AUCKLAND’S Covid-19 cases may be starting to plateau, but the rest of the country could still have three weeks of climbing case numbers, epidemiologist Michael Baker says.

The Ministry of Health announced 18,833 new community cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand yesterday and 597 people with the virus are in hospital. Five more people with Covid-19 have also died in hospital. All were at Auckland hospitals.

It is a decrease in daily cases, which have consistently been above 20,000 for the past few days.

Baker, a professor at the University of Otago, said it looked like Auckland could be reaching its peak, but didn’t want to draw conclusions on a single day’s numbers.

He said Auckland took up such a big part of the daily cases numbers because of its big population, so the rest of the country was two or three weeks behind with transmission of the virus.

The number of new cases in Auckland dropped from 13,252 on Friday to 9789 yesterday. There were 13,237 cases in Auckland on Thursday and 13,231 on Wednesday.

‘‘At the moment no-one is really able to relax their behaviour for several weeks until we have really seen case numbers fall to low levels in the country,’’ said Baker.

‘‘The message is the level of exposure in the country is rising at the moment. Auckland is on a plateau, but this virus is going to be everywhere in Auckland, even if numbers have dropped.’’

The other thing that may have changed was the use of rapid antigen tests (RATs), which were now available to the public.

Baker believed people may be testing positive with a RAT and not entering the result online through the ministry’s My Covid Record, which could be affecting official case numbers.

He encouraged people to enter the result even if it was negative so there was a clear picture of how many tests were being done.

Yesterday was also the first day where all New Zealanders, not just those travelling from Australia or the Cook Islands, were able to return to the country without going through managed isolation since the borders closed in March of 2020.

An Emirates flight landed at Auckland International Airport shortly after 1pm yesterday and passengers were greeted with live music and goodie bags of Kiwi treats including Peanut Slabs and Feijoa Lumps.

Manurewa resident

Pollyanna Alo was at the terminal to pick up her cousin, Henry Laula, whom she hadn’t seen for over four years and whose father had been ill while they’d been apart.

‘‘It’s been pretty tough,’’ said Alo. ‘‘Him not being here to care for his dad has been extremely tough for them as a family.’’