All Covid settings to be reviewed next week

All Covid-19 settings will be reviewed next week as Auckland appears to be moving past its Omicron peak, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says.

Speaking to media in Auckland, Ardern said that as the country ‘‘came down’’ from its first peak there would be less of a case for widespread use of vaccine passes. ‘‘Over the coming week we will be looking at all of our settings,’’ Ardern said.

‘‘As we come down off our peak of Omicron ... we will be relooking at everything from mandates to vaccine passes, which we don’t believe will need to be used as widely any more.

‘‘And we will also be looking at all of the settings within the traffic light [system] – so we will be making those decisions in the coming week.’’

New Zealand is currently in the ‘‘red’’ setting, which limits the number of people at venues and events, and compels many venues to use vaccine passes if they wish to operate properly.

Ardern cautioned it was not yet clear Auckland was definitely passing its peak and that the rest of the country certainly was not.

The Government would look at hospitalisations to judge various peaks – which lagged new case numbers, she said.

There is nothing to stop Auckland entering a new traffic light setting ahead of the rest of the country. The system has seen different regions at different settings before.

Earlier this week, Ardern announced a faster opening of New Zealand’s border, with tourists from many countries able to enter from the start of May.

Yesterday there were 19,566 new community cases of Covid-19 reported nationwide and 10 further deaths; 930 people were in hospital with Covid-19, 23 of

whom were in intensive care or high dependency care units.

The chief clinical officer for the Northern Region Health Coordination Centre, Dr Andrew Old, gave the update at a press conference in Auckland yesterday afternoon.

Old said they were pleased to see the number of new cases in Auckland tracking downward, confirming last week’s optimism that Ta¯maki Makaurau had passed its peak.

The ‘‘long tail’’ was starting to impact older, more medically vulnerable communities, he said.

This was being seen in those hospitalised with Covid-19, with an increasing number of older people in hospital with severe illness. The number of hospitalisations remained high and continued to put pressure on the system, Old said.

A snapshot of 400 admissions at Auckland hospitals found about one-third were clearly admitted due to Covid-19; another third appeared to have Covid as a secondary finding, while a quarter were diagnosed with Covid during their admission. The remaining 8 per cent were people for whom more information was needed.

Having somewhere between 30 and 50 per cent of admissions being due to Covid-19 was in line with what was seen overseas, and was a good reminder of the importance of being boosted, Old said.

The average age of those in hospital nationwide was 58.

‘‘We will be relooking at everything from mandates to vaccine passes.’

’ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern