Goal of elimination achieved, but vigilance still urged
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says Covid-19 is “currently” eliminated in New Zealand and is warning Kiwis they need to do everything they can to prevent a second wave of infection.
“We must make sure that we do not let the virus run away on us again and cause a new wave of cases and deaths,” she said yesterday.
To do this, Ardern said New Zealanders must “hunt down the last few cases of the virus”.
At 11.59 last night the nation officially moved into level 3, where it will stay for at least two weeks more.
From today, people can get takeaways for dinner and to-go coffees from their favourite cafe, as long as there is no person-to-person contact.
Kiwis will also be able to fish and surf under level 3, and Ardern estimated that some 400,000 people will return to work today.
But she’s urging people to remain vigilant as the restrictions ease.
Yesterday was the ninth day in a row where the number of new cases was in single digits. There were five new cases, taking the total number to 1469.
With 1180 recoveries so far, that means New Zealand has only 289 active cases across the country. So, 80 per cent of all confirmed and probable cases have recovered.
“I would say we have achieved, through alert level 4, the position we wanted to be in so that we could now start to move down alert levels,” director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said yesterday. Ardern was equally optimistic. “It’s been nearly five weeks living and working in ways that just two months ago would have seemed like fiction,” she told media. “But we did. And we did it together.”
She confirmed New Zealand has no widespread community transmission — “we have won that battle”.
And there was even more good news for the country as it starts its slow journey back to pre-Covid-19 life.
Asked about the low number of new cases, Bloomfield said: “That does give us confidence that we have achieved our goal of elimination.”
However, he pointed out that elimination never meant getting new cases to zero — “but it does mean we know where our cases are coming from”.
Elimination is different from eradication — whereby the virus is completely stamped out in New Zealand.
By contrast, elimination means the reduction of new Covid-19 cases to either zero, or a very low defined rate.
Asked if New Zealand had eliminated Covid-19, Ardern replied it “currently” had.
But she pointed out that the next challenge for the Government was Covid-19’s tail.
“Elimination means we may well reach zero, but we may well then have small numbers of cases coming up again,” she said.
“That doesn’t mean we have failed, it just means that we’re in the position to have that zero-tolerance approach to have very aggressive management of those cases and keep those numbers low.”
But the fight isn’t over yet, she said. The Government’s focus is now on preventing a second wave of infection in New Zealand.
She believes this can be achieved, but it will require focusing a lot of attention on finding all current cases, and preventing any spread.
She said this would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
But Ardern is confident that needle can be found through the Government’s “significantly scaled up” contact tracing ability.
She said the Ministry of Health has the ability to make as many as 10,000 calls a day, if required.
If fact, Bloomfield said he was “very confident” that his ministry has reached the gold standard when it comes to its contact tracing abilities.
As the Government does its part, Ardern called on New Zealanders — the “team of five million” — to do theirs.
“Record where you have been, who you’ve been with and that will make all our jobs easier.”
But the optimism of the continued number of new cases was tinged in some sadness yesterday, as Bloomfield revealed another death related to Covid-19 — that of a woman in her 90s.
She was part of the St Margaret’s Hospital cluster in West Auckland and is the 19th person to die from Covid-19 in New Zealand.
We must make sure that we do not let the virus run away on us again and cause a new wave of cases and deaths.
Jacinda Ardern