Covid-19: New Zealand 'highly vulnerable' to a large outbreak - experts
Bridie Witton10:32, May 26 2021
New Zealand is “highly vulnerable to a large outbreak” of Covid-19, experts warn, urging vigilance as the
Australian travel bubble, more contagious variants of the virus and cold winter months pose threats.
Underscoring the challenges even for countries hailed as Covid-19 success stories, Taiwan and Singapore are grappling to contain a sudden rise in cases linked to airports.
Taiwan went from reporting single-digit Covid-19 case numbers to a record high of 723 new cases on Saturday, followed by six deaths – its worst outbreak since the pandemic began. Meanwhile, Singapore is fighting to contain a burgeoning cluster linked to
shopping malls.
New Zealand has “several ingredients” for a similiar large outbreak, University of Otago epidemiologist Amanda Kvalsvig said.
These included a low proportion of the population being vaccinated, extremely transmissible variants circulating, the travel bubble with Australia offering more opportunity for the population mixing, and the looming winter season
“And we don’t have good ventilation in indoor spaces in New Zealand,” Kvalsvig said.
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Chiang Ying-ying/AP
Taiwan is battling its worst outbreak since the pandemic began.
More than 150,000 people have been fully inoculated with the two-dose Pfizer vaccine, while more than 500,000 single doses have been administered.
Prominent epidemiologist Michael Baker said the outbreak in Taiwan was a “huge reminder” about the problem of complacency. Its cluster is linked to China Airlines pilots and comes after officials relaxed quarantine requirements for non-vaccinated airline pilots from two weeks, to five days and then to three days.
“That is always a weak spot,” Baker said. “We need to think closely about the border and closing any loopholes with sea and air crews.”
Monique Ford/Stuff
Airports were connected to new outbreaks seens in Singapore and Taiwan.
This was particularly pertinent while the sources of the
August cluster and the
Valentines Day cluster, which led to two level 3 lockdowns in Auckland, were still not known.
The border was the most important area for pandemic control, but were areas officials were-fine tuning, he said.
Travel bans from countries ravaged by the virus, including from India, meant there were significantly fewer infected people moving through quarantine and signalled a fundamental shift in border policy, Baker said.
“There were over 100 active cases in managed isolation and quarantine at the height of that,” he said. “We have turned down the risks by three or four-fold.”
New Zealand shifted to a traffic light system for the travel-bubble, which saw quarantine-free travel with Victoria paused for 72 hours on Tuesday amid an outbreak in Melbourne.
But measures that worked well against Covid-19 in the last year may not work as strongly against the more contagious and deadly variants, physicist and disease modeller Shaun Hendy said.
“Every extra interaction is more risky now,” Hendry said, adding that “in an ideal world” the vaccine roll-out would be sped up as a result. “But we are limited by supply and we don’t want to do it badly.”
Professor Kurt Krause, an infectious disease physician and biochemistry professor also at the University of Otago, said the country needed to be vaccinated as soon as possible. ”I am concerned,” he said. “The new variants are much more contagious. We need to redouble our efforts.”
Ministry of Health spokesman Pete Van Schaardenburg said the roll-out was ahead of target with more than 500,000 doses given by the end of last week.
“This month, vaccinations of some people in group 3 began and this will continue throughout the next few months as this large number of people is worked through - in accordance with the timetable as set out in the sequencing framework,” he said.