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Public health experts believe that the ongoing coronavirus cases in Auckland are too significant to be called clusters and subgroups, but should be termed New Zealand’s second outbreak.
The Auckland large group has 174 cases as of Friday, with two subgroups of 33 cases linked to Mt Roskill Evangelical Fellowship and 13 linked to the church mourning meeting.
Professor Nick Wilson, a public health expert, said the government should call it New Zealand’s second outbreak.
JASON DORDAY / Things
University of Otago professor of public health Nick Wilson says the government is not taking the Auckland outbreak seriously.
While some experts believed the group and sub-group to be technical terminology, the University of Otago academic had much stronger opinions.
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Wilson said it should be called an outbreak, since epidemiologically the term would be more meaningful.
“There are aspects of this that mean there could be unidentified cases out there,” Wilson said.
“If you talk about ‘Auckland outbreak’, it helps people identify it as Auckland as a whole, as an area of concern.”
The Auckland cluster is now the largest in the country with 174 cases as of Friday, exactly one month since four cases emerged on August 11 after more than 100 days without community transmission.
New Zealand registered its first case of coronavirus on February 28 and 24 days later, on March 23, the number had risen to 102.
Abigail Dougherty / Stuff
As of Friday, the largest group in Auckland had 174 cases.
The country was declared in a state of emergency on March 25 after 205 cases, and the next day it was blockaded.
Epidemiologist Michael Baker said that qualifying the Auckland cases as groups and subgroups was less helpful over time.
“The first outbreak had many groups and genotypes, this one again has several groups and one genotype instead of many.
Supplied
Michael Baker says that people cannot afford to let their guard down with coronavirus broadcasts.
“It is not useful to continue calling it a single group, it would be easier to say that it is several groups or an outbreak.”
Microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles said it didn’t matter what the Auckland cases were called, as labeling them as subgroups was just terminology and easier for contact tracing measures.
“It is useful to differentiate when the main Auckland cluster has stopped transmitting, but these are few outbreaks of that,” he said.
ROSS GIBLIN / THINGS
The majority of Wellington commuters wear masks as it becomes mandatory on public transport in an effort to stop the spread of Covid-19.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Health said that describing the events as subgroups recognizes that there is an overlap between the events, but there are also distinct exposures.
