Southern region has 0 cases of Covid-19

Eight weeks after the first coronavirus case in Southland and Otago was reported, the final case has recovered.

Southern District Health Board medical officer of health Dr Susan Jack confirmed yesterday there were no active cases of Covid-19 in the board’s catchment.

‘‘It’s a really good day for us’’.

In the end, 55 people in Southland were infected, along with 161 in Otago, bringing the Southern region’s total to 216 – the second-highest case number for any district health board in the country.

Waitemata¯ District Health Board topped the list.

The first case of Covid-19 was reported in Southland on March 18. Southland Chamber of Commerce chairman Neil McAra identified himself as that first case.

Southland and Otago were the backdrop to two major clusters in the country, including a wedding reception held in Bluff and the World Hereford Conference in Queenstown. Sadly, two people died.

‘‘We do want to acknowledge the sad loss of two people and the enormous loss to their family and friends,’’ Jack said.

Jack said that at first it appeared those with Covid-19 in the two regions were taking longer to recover.

Information provided early in the outbreak from overseas was that it took two weeks to recover.

Those in Southern DHB were taking longer than a fortnight, with the longest being six weeks, Jack said.

However, new recovery data showed the Southern DHB cases were aligned with that of overseas, she said.

Jack said the community needed to be thanked for helping to stop the spread of the virus.

‘‘By and large, when people were asked to be isolated, they were.

‘‘We are just glad to finally be in this position’’.

However, Jack urged the community to remain vigilant and get tested if they were showing any symptoms.

While regional travel was allowed meaning more movement, ‘‘the risk for us is when the [international] boarders open’’, Jack said.

Earlier in the outbreak, Age Concern Southland elder abuse response co-ordinator Chris Larsen said people were walking into her office in tears, with fears that New Zealand might go the same way as Italy, where many older people had succumbed to the virus.

Two days before Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that the country would go into lockdown was when a couple got married in Invercargill, hosting their reception at a restaurant in Bluff.

It would become the biggest cluster in the country, with 98 cases linked to the event.

At least 10 of those cases were Invercargill City Council staff.

The groom’s father died in Wellington shortly after.

Then, on April 19, director-general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield confirmed that a man in his 70s had died of Covid-19 complications at home in Invercargill.

He was New Zealand’s first Covid19 death.

Southland would see one more death from the virus when beloved mother and grandmother Jocelyn Finlayson, 62, died in Dunedin Hospital. The Invercargill woman was New Zealand’s youngest casualty.

‘‘Promising’’ signs are emerging as officials contemplate what Covid-19 alert level 1 will look like, after the country recorded a fourth-straight day yesterday without a new coronavirus case.

New Zealand’s total probable and confirmed case count remains at 1503, with 6113 tests carried out on Wednesday.

The last recorded death was on May 6, leaving the nation’s death toll at 21, with director-general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield saying it was his ‘‘great hope’’ it will be the last.

Just one person was receiving hospital-level care due to the virus, however the Middlemore Hospital patient was not in intensive care.

Bloomfield said he was feeling ‘‘very encouraged as we all should’’.

‘‘I think we are in a good position to provide advice to Cabinet to make a decision next Monday about the possibility of increasing the numbers in groups.

‘‘Of course, the key thing here is that because as, again, we’ve had quite high numbers of tests being done of both symptomatic and asymptomatic people, we’re just increasingly confident that there aren’t pockets out there.

‘‘That really then allows us to start thinking really seriously about what would a move to alert level 1 look like,’’ Bloomfield said.

The intention was to review the mass gathering restrictions after two weeks. ‘‘And I think you’ll be able to infer from the numbers, that everything remains promising . . . I think all of the indications are positive,’’ he added.

Authorities were ‘‘increasingly confident’’ the chain of transmission has been broken.

The uptake for the Ministry of Health’s contact tracing app has been good, with more than 236,000 people downloading it since it became available on Tuesday.

Around 6500 businesses have the QR codes in place, with

Bloomfield describing this as a good result.

The app asks for ethnicity details, something Bloomfield said was important to be able to paint a picture with the data.

On bars and pubs reopening, Bloomfield said hospitality businesses needed to ensure physical distancing was practised.

They were among the last group of businesses to resume trading, as the Government considered them to pose the biggest risk in spreading the virus.

Bloomfield said testing will be carried out in two distinct groups, the first would be symptomatic people in level 1 and 2.

There will also be targeted surveillance testing of people with high risk groups like border control workers and airline crew.

The case definition for testing was under review, with the aim of testing several thousand people a day, Bloomfield said.

At the moment, ‘‘a detailed plan’’ was being developed on surveillance testing, with more details likely to be made public next week.