New Zealand has passed 200 daily cases of Covid-19 for the first time in the pandemic, placing it on a worrying trajectory for the summer and raising expert concerns that the growing outbreak could overwhelm the health system.
On Saturday there were 206 cases announced – 200 based in Auckland, the city at the centre of the outbreak. There were 73 people in hospital with the virus, seven in intensive care.
The record case numbers arrived as the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, gave a speech promising the country better times ahead. “To all of New Zealand, but especially Auckland, I say: he rā ki tua, better times are coming,” she said on Saturday at the Labour party conference.
“Over the coming weeks, we will see the level of protection in our communities increase as more people are vaccinated. In fact, we’re on track to have amongst the highest vaccination rates in the world, already having overtaken the likes of Australia, the US, the UK, France, Germany and Ireland.”
According to the Ministry of Health, 89% of eligible New Zealanders – those aged 12 and over – have had their first dose and 78% are fully immunised.
But experts have continued to raise concerns in recent weeks that New Zealand’s growing daily case numbers could outpace its vaccine rollout, leading to a devastating outbreak before enough of the population is protected. Epidemiologists at research centre Te Pūnaha Matatini released modelling last week indicating that a high-transmission scenario, which maps on to the current daily case numbers New Zealand is seeing, could result in around 2,300 hospitalisations and 160 deaths between the start of October and start of January – a potential need for hospital care that “would place extreme demands on health system capacity”.
Vaccination rates are particularly low among Māori and Pacific New Zealanders, especially in younger age brackets. Three in four (74%) of eligible Māori have had one dose of the vaccine and 56% are fully vaccinated. Public health experts have raised ongoing concerns that Māori and Pasifika would bear the worst health consequences of a widespread outbreak.
Ardern said higher vaccination rates would mean “not every Covid case will trigger the anxiety of sudden lockdowns, but it will also mean that we continue to treat Covid seriously and take measures to protect people from it”.
“Life may be different for a time, but it can and will feel more familiar again. And after so much disruption, so much anxiety, everyone deserves that,” she said.