Covid Watch

Auckland University vaccinologist Helen Petousis-Harris joined Simon Barnett and James Daniels to discuss Super Saturday, where the Prime Minister is hoping that 100,000 people will get vaccinated.
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The Student Volunteer Army is rallying its troops to help out with Super Saturday. 
Volunteers will direct traffic and people to clinics tomorrow. 
700 group members have volunteered more than 1500 hours at vaccine clinics in the last three months. 
Chief executive Sam Johnson says it's a shame New Zealand did not mobilise as many volunteers as it could have for the vaccine rollout.  
"At a time like this, and with a mobilisation like this, volunteers should have been at the heart of it, very much like the UK did." 
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Canberra may soon be able to boast about being the most vaccinated city in the world.  
More than 98 percent of eligible residents have had the first jab and authorities expect a 99 percent fully vaccinated population by the end of next month.  
The high socioeconomic status and education levels are thought to be the reason why.  
Australian Medical Association ACT Branch former president Antonio Di Dio says told Mike Hosking the state's high number of cases may have been a factor.  
"The states that are relatively free from Covid are the ones with the far lower vaccination rate, and you see that all across the world." 
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I think as we wrap this week, we just have to accept we are at a point now where counting cases is actually pointless. 
Delta has got away on us, it's had a good laugh at our elimination strategy, and off it's gone and there’s no stopping it now. 
Hindsight’s a wonderful thing, but earlier access to vaccines, a few more ICU beds, a better MIQ system and all the other things we didn’t do would’ve been great, but that ship has sailed. 
So here we are, and let’s look on the bright side. We’re allegedly not ever going back into Level 4. So that’s it. That’s all the bright side I can think of.  
As Auckland, Waikato and Northland enter another weekend at Level 3 and the rest of the country in Level 2, we only have to look across the ditch to see how this thing goes. It takes time, and lots of it. We long ago kissed goodbye any lingering thoughts of a ‘short sharp’ lockdown, but what we need to accept is that this could go for quite a while yet. 
The kids who thought they'd be gearing up for school Monday will be home instead. The retailers who thought they may've been able to open by now, still shut. The gyms, the hairdressers, the physios, all still waiting. 
So how do we keep up the stamina for it? I spoke with a girlfriend in Sydney the other day and she said after 15 weeks of lockdown, survival mode kicked in. She YouTubed how to cut hair and became the family barber, she got creative at home with the kids doing stuff they wouldn’t normally do. Tried to make it an adventure basically. 
But the emotional rollercoaster is real. When Freedom Day finally arrived, she said it actually felt weird to see lots of people out and about and going into places, and things returning to ‘normal’. Easy to forget what normal is after all that time. 
Here, we're still at the carnage stage. I feel bad for the events sector, they’ve been politely waiting a very long time to be told what might happen for them. I was surprised they didn’t kick up more of a fuss about a plan forward for their sector, but a lot of the festivals are run by Jacinda’s mates, so they may’ve been trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. 
But we’re now seeing the cancels start to ramp up, Canterbury’s A&P show, Bay Dreams, Christmas in The Park, other smaller scale festivals. God only knows what'll happen if Rhythm and Vines doesn’t go ahead, there’ll be anarchy amongst the PM’s usual teen fan base, and she won’t want that.  
The other thing that’s struck me this week is the hypocrisy going on and the blame shifting. We need to abide the rules and stop illegal gatherings, but that doesn't necessarily apply to gangs and their cohorts? We need to stay put, but absconders who don't may or may not be named, questioned and charged. 
I think if the Pulpit of Truth could do us a favour and stop blaming Aucklanders, most of whom are trying their best, and just harden up on the leaky border and the problems known to them that're creating the bulk of the distress, that'd help.

So, we end the week in a state of malaise around where we sit on Covid. 
There is yet another of these dreary over-hyped decision days coming Monday. Waikato and Northland got a good dose of it this week, the old feeling of "are we, are we, are? No, we are not." 
Elimination is well and truly over. So, guessing levels and easing of restrictions based on numbers is now a dead game. 
But this week has been depressing for a couple of reasons. The numbers have been going up, so if they can't relax restrictions on last week's numbers, they won't be relaxing them on numbers that are even worse. But adding to that is the so-called experts, who seem to have lost their heads. 
It started with Rod Jackson, who yelled to a reporter "I am freaking out." The rest of the week has been spent being told we need to move to Level 4, or that we are on the edge of the precipice. 
The problem with experts is they are myopic. They have their little area of specialty and they become so absorbed by it, the rest of the world and those in it, don't really matter. The fact that cancer diagnosis go unattended doesn't really matter. The same way we have decided dying of heart disease is not as important as dying with Covid. 
The concept of our hospitals being full is suddenly so alarming we need to spend hours on it and yet every winter our hospitals are regularly full with boring stuff like flu and we don't care. I think it's come as quite the surprise to many New Zealanders that hospitals were in fact pretty much full at the best of times. 
What we are seeing here is the big shift. It's not going well. That big shift is what the rest of the world has managed seemingly fairly well, the living with Covid. The fact there are cases every day, in some instances lots of them, is not the end of the world. 
We remain about the only place that has 40-ish cases a day and the medicos think its Armageddon. The trouble with that is we lack leadership. We have a government that has never admitted their elimination strategy didn't work and they bailed. We have a government that won't give targets, hope, or light by way of guidance and timelines. And we have the wonks panicking. 
What sort of transition plan is that? It's abundantly clear the only answer now is the vaccine. To be frank it's now more up to us, there is no longer an excuse. 
In totality, this whole thing has been a shambles run by children and incompetents. Most of us are over it. 
I'm jabbed, I'm over it, and I want my life back. 
This week with its numbers and panic has shown us those running this thing were never really up to it, and Delta exposed them for what they are.

THE BEST BITS IN A SILLIER PACKAGE (from Friday's Mike Hosking Breakfast) No Real Change/Why Don't You Know Anything?/Target Shaming/Numbers to Watch/Mark the Week

The global supply chain is under extreme stress.  
US President Joe Biden has announced the Los Angeles port will now operate 24-seven, to help alleviate some pressure ahead of Christmas. 
The UK is pouring money into the problem, while G7 finance ministers agree to work together to address it.  
Customs Brokers and Freight Forwarders Federation President Chris Edwards told Mike Hosking the main issue is congestion. 
"Vessels arriving in bunches like here in New Zealand, for example, no one can cope with it. It's already a 14 day wait from Tauranga to Auckland on rail at the moment for a container, which at this time of year is pretty unpopular, but it's because our infrastructure is not built to handle surges." 
Lyttleton Port is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in order to keep up with demand.
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In a race against Delta, the Government is completely revamping how cases are managed so low risk ones will isolate at home to free up quarantine rooms for those more likely to infect others. 
The change will also allow more of the tens of thousands of Kiwis wanting to come home from overseas to do so - but probably not until early next year. 
In an exclusive interview with the Herald, Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said most of the people in MIQ didn't have the virus, but are taking up rooms that will be needed as more and more people catch Delta. 
The Government has been working on similar changes for 2022 with more open borders, but the need has now become immediate, alongside the sprint to get people vaccinated, as case numbers climb. 
Yesterday there were 71 new cases, the highest daily number since the start of September. 
"We shouldn't underestimate the extent to which we're right at the tipping point of having to make some big decisions, based on a fundamentally different risk profile to the one we had a couple of months ago," Hipkins said. 
Back then, there was no Covid in the community, and the risk was mainly at the border as overseas travellers potentially brought the virus in. 
But Delta is now in the community and here to stay. 
On Wednesday there were 284 out of 586 quarantine rooms in use, and 617 active cases. But that number could tip over 1000 within weeks, with case numbers estimated to hit 160 a day by early November. 
At that point, contact tracing capacity - revealed yesterday at 170 to 180 cases a day - would be under severe strain, and MIQ facilities would be at bursting point. 
"We have to look at our MIQ settings. Are we isolating the right people?" Hipkins said. 
"At the moment right across MIQ, including the international arrivals and close contacts of cases, the vast majority don't have Covid. 
"When you're dealing with actual cases in the community, you want as many as possible to be safely isolated, so the whole risk assessment changes." 
That means cases at low risk of infecting others will isolate at home, while high risk ones will be moved to MIQ. 
Those could include people who are sick, live in large households or places that make isolation tricky, or are less likely to comply with what is necessarily a high-trust model. 
Asked when home isolation might start, Hipkins said: "We're at that point now. If a case was identified out of the cases today who could safely isolate at home, we'd be telling them to do that - particularly if they're asymptomatic." 
MIQ has capacity for about 4500 rooms a fortnight, but most are for overseas arrivals. 
Hipkins has flagged shorter MIQ stays for fully vaccinated Kiwis coming home who've had a negative pre-departure test - though when this would start is still to be decided. 
It would free up more MIQ space for the Kiwis abroad who are furious with the MIQ voucher lottery. 
But given the expected increase in cases, Hipkins said the doors to Kiwis overseas wouldn't be widened until "probably early next year". 
"We're not suddenly turning the tap on, or anything like that." 
'Fuel to the fire' warning 
Epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker said home isolation wasn't without risk, but it was better to use it for low risk cases than be forced to use it for high risk ones because MIQ rooms were full. 
"With suppression, you're not concerned about every transmission event anymore, but about reducing the frequency of transmission," he said. 
"You put more of your resources into people who are the most vulnerable, or at the highest risk of transmission - people who are in the worst housing situations, for example." 
Covid-19 modeller Professor Michael Plank said the Government had little choice, given the rising number of cases and limited MIQ space. 
"We won't have enough MIQ space for the case numbers we will see." 

One Māori health care provider is trying to improve vaccine rates in the area with one of the worst coverage rates in the country.  
In the Eastern Bay of Plenty, vaccinators have taken to the road to get vaccination rates up for Māori.  
Te Puna Ora O Mataatua has set up pop up centres in schools, marae and workplaces.  
Chief Executive Lee Colquhoun says told Kate Hawkesby understanding cultural differences is key.  
"You need make sure that you understand how important word of mouth within Māori communities are, some are a little bit hesitant." 
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The global supply chain is under extreme stress.  
US President Joe Biden has announced the Los Angeles port will now operate 24-seven, to help alleviate some pressure ahead of Christmas. 
The UK is pouring money into the problem, while G7 finance ministers agree to work together to address it.  
Customs Brokers and Freight Forwarders Federation President Chris Edwards told Mike Hosking the main issue is congestion. 
"Vessels arriving in bunches like here in New Zealand, for example, no one can cope with it. It's already a 14 day wait from Tauranga to Auckland on rail at the moment for a container, which at this time of year is pretty unpopular, but it's because our infrastructure is not built to handle surges." 
LISTEN ABOVE