Covid case fears keep regions stuck in level 2

Cases of Covid-19 could be lurking in communities outside of Auckland undetected, which is why the regions need to remain at alert level 2, scientists say.

Auckland has been in level 3 lockdown, and the rest of the country has been at level 2, since Sunday after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that a man who had coronavirus broke the rules by visiting numerous public places, including a gym, while infectious. The man’s mother also tested positive for Covid-19.

The restrictions are expected to be in place until at least Saturday.

In the past three days, while other cases of the virus have been found in MIQ facilities, none have been confirmed in the community. But experts said it was still too soon to know whether the cluster of infections had been contained – or if it had spread outside of Auckland.

In total, 15 cases among nonreturnees have been connected to each other in the past two weeks, 10 of which are active, making up the Auckland February cluster.

Physicist and pandemic modeller Professor Shaun Hendy said having level 2 restrictions – which required patrons at restaurants and cafes to be seated and physically distanced and gatherings to be limited to 100 people – around the country was ‘‘prudent’’.

‘‘That just means if we do have cases out there in the rest of New Zealand they’ll be easier to contain should we find them.’’

Because it was effectively impossible to completely seal the border around Auckland, it was possible for an outbreak of Covid19 there to spread to other areas very quickly, he said.

‘‘There’s a large number of movements in and out of Auckland all the time, it’s sort of the

economic hub of New Zealand, lots of goods move in and out of Auckland.’’

Clinical microbiologist professor David Murdoch, dean of the University of Otago’s Christchurch campus, said the fact the outbreak had occurred in such a large, densely populated city made the opportunity for transmission much greater.

‘‘We’re still trying to get information about the exact perimeter of this cluster’’ – and with uncertainty came risk, he said.

Deciding which alert level to set was a balancing exercise as the Government had to weigh up the risk of the virus spreading against the need for people to have freedom.

Otago University epidemiologist and professor of public health Michael Baker said it was possible that people in Auckland had come into contact with the virus, had left the city before lockdown and were infectious in other parts of the country.

Seven days at alert level 2 allowed time to identify any cases. So while it was not inconceivable the country would come out of level 2 early, it did go against the rationale of what moving up alert levels was trying to achieve, he said.

If further cases were identified in Auckland – but not anywhere else – after a week, the country may return to alert level 1 while Auckland stayed in lockdown.

Baker said the alert levels needed to be revisited, with better definitions of what ‘‘inbetween’’ alert levels were.

When announcing that there were no new cases of Covid-19 in the community yesterday, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said while the news was reassuring, the country was ‘‘not yet out of the woods’’.

He defended the decision to move up alert levels, pointing to the number of potential exposure events linked to the young man known as Case M.