Two years ago I was watching China, Italy, and Spain coping with a new virus called Covid-19. There were no vaccines available, and thousands of people were dying. Aotearoa New Zealand went into lockdown in March 2020 for 5 weeks. The border controls, small limited lockdowns, and other health measures have managed to keep Covid-19 manageable, and since July 2020 vaccines have been available. Currently 15,379 cases and 52 deaths. Currently 78% of the country is vaccinated. When out and about, we stand 2m apart from anyone outside of our "bubble " (household), wear masks, use hand sanitiser. We are double vaccinated, and waiting for 4 months to be up, so we can have the booster vaccine.
A new variant of Covid-19 called Omricon has arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand. This variant is super contagious, and the Ministry of Health recommends having a booster shot, to help minimise the effects of the disease. It is expected that in 3 weeks, there will be 10,000s cases a day. With the Delta outbreak in August/September 2021, we got to 320 cases per day. I am not sure if our health system will cope, as seen overseas, 20% of cases need hospital care, even if vaccinated. USA data indicates that during the rapid spread of Omicron, vaccinated people experienced more breakthrough infections but were still much less likely to be infected than the unvaccinated.
Today, worldwide there have been 346 million cases of Covid, and 5.59 million deaths.
To keep NZ in perspective, USA has 70.4 million cases, and 865,000 deaths
England as 15.7 million cases and 153,000 deaths. Australia has 2.13 million cases and 3043 deaths.
The border MIQ quarantine hotels have stopped a lot of covid getting into New Zealand. Currently new arrivals need to quarantine for 10 days, it used to be 7, but Omricon got through. Today we go back to our highest level of alert - RED. No more than 100 vaccinated people gathering. Masks and distancing required.
Last August 2021, there was an outbreak of the Delta variant. We went into lockdown on 16 August for 2 weeks in Rotorua. Auckland was in lockdown for 107 days., and came out of lockdown on December 2nd. This is our progress so far.
Jan 23 - Day 159 since L4 started. 24 new community cases (-19), 11490 total community cases. 10997 (est) recovered (+36) and 466 active cases (-12). 8 in hospital (nc) and 0 in ICU (nc). 27 deaths (nc). 7-day rolling average of new daily cases is 26/day (nc)
You might be surprised at how many vaxxed people still get Covid. This doesn't mean the vaccine isn't working, just that there is such a huge pool of vaccinated people that some of them will still get it. It's called the base rate fallacy.
