Coronavirus Update #23
September 18 - There are no new cases today! This is the fourth day in a row of no community spread, and I am cautiously optimistic that we may have dodged the bullet again with this second wave. There is a little grey cloud to all of this: two people who flew from New Zealand to Malaysia tested positive, and no one knows how or why. This isn’t the first time someone flying out of New Zealand has tested positive - there was one case in South Korea and two in Australia before - and it is always shocking when it happens. Hopefully more details come out soon about how they could have tested positive, and hopefully there is lots of testing on those individuals’ close contacts here in NZ.
September 19 - There are two new cases today. One is in managed isolation, and the other is a community case that they are trying to find a link to. I hate when they put out these uncertain cases because I feel like the media does a poor job on following up with the cases later on. I hope they’re able to find the link because on Monday the government is supposed to review our levels. There is a general understanding that the rest of the country will probably go down to level 1 while Auckland will go down to level 2. If there are cases of unknown origin, however, I don’t feel safe changing the levels down and I certainly don’t want the government to feel obligated to move when it isn’t safe.
September 20 - There are four new cases today, two of which are in managed isolation. The other two? Household contacts from yesterday’s mystery case, including one primary school student. The media has also released more information about the mystery case (yeah!) but it isn’t good news. Apparently this person returned from India on August 27, sailed through quarantine with two negative tests, and only started having symptoms five days after getting out of quarantine and 21 days after his flight. The powers that be have genomically matched this strain to other people infected on the flight, but they’re not ruling out other options from where it came from. This is a really frightening scenario. Could this be how the Auckland cluster got started? By a person who had a long incubation period? Should we require a 24 day quarantine to be sure that people really aren’t infected? There’s a lot to digest with this one, especially because the person flew from Christchurch to Auckland and could’ve potentially spread this to others.
September 21 - There are no new cases today either in the community or in managed isolation. It has now been seven days since there were any new cases as part of the large Auckland cluster that was our second wave. It also sounds like the contact tracers have identified and isolated all potential close contacts to the man who was a long incubator and tested positive earlier in the week after completing his 14 days in quarantine. To go along with the good news, it was announced that Auckland will move to Level 2 on Wednesday night and the rest of the country will move to Level 1 tonight. Basically, this means that groups of up to 100 will be allowed in Auckland as opposed to the 10 limit we’ve had for the past few weeks. The hope is that we’ll move to Level 1 in two more weeks to join the rest of the country. In the meantime, we’ll keep wearing our masks, washing our hands, and getting tested whenever someone sneezes. (Just kidding. We haven’t been tested that much, but it does seem like if you are in the slightest bit sick with anything, the doctor’s give you a test.)
September 22 - There are no new cases today, and I was pleasantly surprised to see quite a few people still wearing masks and using the Covid Tracer app when I went out to run errands. At the beginning of Level 2.5, I’d say about 70% of the people were wearing masks overall. Today it was closer to 30-40%, but still better than it was at Level 3 when people were not interested. I’m cautiously optimistic that in two weeks we’ll be back down to Level 1 and back to “normal.”
September 23 - There are three new cases linked to the “long incubator” - a family that was on the same flight from Christchurch to Auckland. They have been isolating for the past few days as they were contacted by the tracers following up on everyone on the flight. That makes five new cases linked to this one in the past six days which is frightening. There were 86 people on this flight, not including crew. How many more of them could’ve become infected and dispersed all over the Auckland area with this extra baggage?
September 24 - There are three new cases in Managed Isolation today, but no more community cases. However, there is a lot of new information about the family that was announced yesterday. Apparently they did a bit of sight seeing and were running around in Taupo. It has also come to light that *gasp* they didn’t continue to follow Auckland’s Level 2 rules when they were outside of Auckland and rules were more lax. Instead of limiting themselves to groups of no more than 10, they met with a group of at least 18 who are now all close contacts and self isolating. I think this new group of cases may force the government to reevaluate the managed isolation requirements for returnees. I’ve seen the idea floated that after leaving MIQ facilities, returnees should then spend at least another week in isolation at home - or wherever they are staying upon arrival. The speed at which the long incubation case is spreading is a good reminder as to why all of our precautions are in place.
This week we are now at 1,471 cases overall and 65 active cases. 31 of the active cases are border cases while the remaining 34 are a combination of Auckland cluster and long incubation cluster cases. There are three people in the hospital. The largest age group of cases is those 30-39 (17) followed by 0-9 (14). 47 cases are in people under 40, so this is a far cry from the “it only infects old people” information from the beginning of the pandemic. The good news is that the numbers seem to be going down more than up. If the tracers can get ahead of this new line of infections, I’m optimistic we may be able to get down to Level 1 at some point, though I’m doubtful of the move down in less than two weeks given the new cases.
