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New Zealand has gone seven days without a community case of Covid-19.
It has been a week since the last community case, the first time New Zealand has gone so long without cases since the second outbreak began on August 11.
No new cases of coronavirus were reported on Friday.
But experts say that going a week without community cases does not mean the country is out of the woods just yet.
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Although it was an encouraging sign, public health epidemiologist at the University of Otago, Wellington, Dr. Amanda Kvalsvig said New Zealand could only have a reasonable level of confidence that it had regained elimination of the coronavirus if it reaches 28 days without community spread.
“Of course if new cases appear, that clock is reset once more.”
Abigail Dougherty / Stuff
Some experts agree that the country needs to go 28 days without new community cases before it can be declared eliminated (file photo).
Epidemiologist Michael Baker agreed that the country needed to wait two incubation periods to be sure the virus had been eliminated.
He said seven days was too early to say it had been.
Rather than seeing Auckland possibly drop to alert level 1 next week, Baker wanted to see a 1.5 level set so that restrictions would remain in “high-risk situations” such as the size of indoor meetings.
“It would be more sensible to have 1.5”.
He explained that there needed to be more gradations in alert levels to adequately reflect risk and how to manage it.
Professor Shaun Hendy, director of Te Pūnaha Matatini, said New Zealanders should be more cautious at this level 1 than in June when wearing masks and getting tested if they have any symptoms of coronavirus.
He felt that going seven days without community transmission was “quite significant” and a “high probability” that the virus had been eliminated in the community.
“The cases we’ve seen in recent weeks are already isolated, so the chances of further community transmission are low,” Hendy said.
“The numbers look very, very good and suggest a high probability that we have eliminated the August group from Auckland.”
Hendy and Baker praised Auckland’s Maori and Pacific communities for helping to stop the spread of the virus.
“Maori and Pacific leaders have been extremely effective in supporting the community’s response to the virus and have come forward very quickly to be assessed and to follow the rules,” Baker said.
Epidemiologist Arindam Basu, an associate professor at the University of Canterbury, said that although no cases over an extended period were a “great sign”, it would be wise to wait at least another week before Auckland finally returned to level 1.
Basu said that based on the best estimates from experts and knowledge of the transmission of the virus, intensified testing should be done first.
“Encouraging Trends, But Another Week May Be Prudent.”
On Friday, the director of public health for the Ministry of Health, Dr. Caroline McElnay, said that no one was in the hospital with the virus.
Ten people had recovered from the coronavirus, meaning New Zealand has 43 active cases, 11 of these are community cases.
The labs processed 4,403 tests Thursday.
On Thursday, twelve new cases of coronavirus were detected, all of them in controlled isolation. Ten of them were people who had come in a single flight from India.
As a result, the Health Ministry is considering whether pre-departure coronavirus testing for people heading to New Zealand should be part of the country’s border protection measures.
