Covid Watch

There are 41 new community cases today, taking the size of the outbreak to 148 cases, with over half of those being in the Pasifika community, from a sub-cluster at the Samoan Assembly of God church in Mangere with 58 cases. 
But there's concern that we still don't know just how big this outbreak could get, only half of the 16,000 close contacts have returned test results so far. 
Covid cases visited 32 new locations of interest during the lockdown, 13 of them in South Auckland 
But chair of the Pacific Response Coordination Team Pakilau Manase Lua says it's not their fault.  
He says when people hear South Auckland, churches and Pacific they jump to conclusions. And that they should remember the first case was on the North Shore, and a church in Freeman's Bay was linked but there was no kerfuffle.  
He also says while this outbreak is concerning, they've made it out to the other side before and that the community has solutions.
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Australia's pushing ahead with plans to end lockdowns once 70-80% of the eligible population is vaccinated.
Doherty Institute research says reopening the country will be safe when they hit that target.
Australian correspondent Murray Olds says the findings are telling.
New South Wales has 753 new local cases today, Victoria has 50, the A.C.T 30 and Queensland 2.
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Stranded Kiwis are upset by the halt in MIQ bookings.
The booking system has been paused due to the latest Covid-19 outbreak.
Ashwin Naidu runs a travel bubble group on Facebook to help get Kiwis home.
He says the pause in MIQ bookings and the cancellation of vouchers is devastating. He describes it as being "abandoned by your own government" if you're overseas.
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Covid-19 has slammed a huge dent in the number of New Zealand businesses.
About 35,000 have closed in the past year.
Business New Zealand CEO Kirk Hope says that number is double the norm for annual business closures.
However Hope says about 30,000 businesses have formed in the same period the 35,000 closed.
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Well, as expected, we're all going to be doing this for a wee bit longer, and Auckland probably longer than others. 
I think knowing it was inevitable has made it easier to accept. 
There's some good news - the town of Coromandel appears to have dodged a bullet and yet again, people are scratching their heads as to why, if this virus is so incredibly transmissible, someone with the Delta variant can rock on at the local pub which was absolutely packed, go into cafes, spend time with other people - and people don't catch it. 
We saw that too with the Australian tourist in Wellington and the AUT student and gym go-er back last year.
But how are you doing? How are the business people, the parents with kids at home, the older people living on their own, are you coping?  
Is this lockdown better than the last one? It certainly is for me. 
I'd just sold the house, three days before our first big lockdown, and had yet to find another one.  A relationship of 22 years had ended. 
I didn't know when or if I'd see my London based family again.  I had jobs vanishing - the Woman's Weekly was part of the Bauer stable and they shut up shop.  All my speaking gigs were postponed then cancelled.  Here at NZME we lost Radio Sport. 
At work, it was almost impossible to get any information out of either the PM's Office or the Commissioner of Police, and what information you could find was often contradictory. That made me anxious because I had anxious people ringing me looking for answers and I simply couldn't give them the information they needed. 
It was a horrible, horrible time.  This time, not so much. 
We know what a level 4 lockdown looks like.  My family is safe.  I have a home I'm living in and one to move into.  I have a job.  All the hashtags. 
But how are you coping?  
Applications opened for the Resurgence Support Payment - that's designed to help business who have experienced at a least a 30 percent decline in revenue over the past seven days as a result of the increase in alert levels. 
Is paying the bills your main concern?  Is worry about your living arrangements your main concern?  Your family?  Or are you like those splendid unicorns who are absolutely making the most of this pause on everyday life?

The Australian Prime Minister's plan to reopen the country at a 70-80 per cent vaccination rate and treat the Delta variant "like the flu" has been slammed as dangerous and reckless by some of the nation's top health and economic researchers.
According to modelling from the Australian National University, if Scott Morrison's current coronavirus plan proceeds, tens of thousands Australians will likely die and hundreds of thousands will likely develop cases of long Covid.
"We found substantial morbidity and mortality is likely to occur if the Australian government sticks to the national plan," ANU economics professor and study co-author Professor Quentin Grafton said.
If Australia reopens with 70 per cent of Australians aged over 16 fully vaccinated, there could eventually be 6.9 million cases of Covid-19, 154,000 hospitalisations, and 29,000 fatalities, Grafton said.
"We simply can't afford to do that, both in terms of lives and long-term illness from Covid."
And even if the PM waits until 80 per cent of the adult population are vaccinated to open up, thousands of lives will still be destroyed, according to the modelling.
"Assuming 80 per cent vaccination coverage for only those over 16, as per the national plan, there could be approximately 25,000 fatalities and some 270,000 cases of long Covid," Grafton said.
"The consequences of prematurely and fully relaxing public health measures to suppress Covid-19, even after vaccinating 80 per cent of adults, would likely be irreversible, and unacceptable to many Australians," study co-author and University of Western Australia senior research officer Dr Zoë Hyde echoed.
"It's simply too dangerous to treat Covid-19 like the flu."
But Morrison has stayed firm in his insistence that lockdowns will become "a thing of the past" once 80 per cent of the adult population has been vaccinated.
"Once you get to 80 per cent vaccination, it is against the country's interests not to open up," Morrison told the ABC last Monday.
But to prevent mass deaths and hospitalisations, the ANU-led modelling outlines that a vaccination rate of at least 90 per cent, which includes children under 16, is needed.
"If children are also fully vaccinated, national fatalities – for all age groups – would be reduced to 19,000 with 80 per cent adult vaccination coverage. This would fall to 10,000 at a 90 per cent adult vaccination coverage," Grafton said.
"Children also directly benefit from vaccination. If we could achieve 75 cent vaccination coverage among children and adolescents, we could prevent 12,000 hospitalisations in these age groups."
To give Australians a decent chance in a country without lockdowns or other restrictions, the researchers argue that four key steps must be achieved first:
Vaccinating both children and adolescents; reaching 95 per cent full vaccination among people 60 and older as well as other vulnerable groups, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders; giving an mRNA booster shot to all Australians vaccinated with AstraZeneca, as well as a booster shot to those vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine, when appropriate; reaching more than 90 per cent vaccination coverage among all Australians.
Study co-author and University of Melbourne environmental economics professor Tom Kompas warned his research had used the lower estimates of the severity of the Delta variant, meaning the real-life outcomes would likely be even worse than the modelling predicted.
"Our projections likely represent a lower estimate of the cumulative public health outcomes of fully relaxing public health measures at Phase D of the national plan," he said.
But Kompas said it wasn't too late for the federal government to turn things around, noting there was still an opportunity to devise "a safe and affordable transition to a post-Covid-19 era".
"If national cabinet revises its strategy to include our four vaccination steps,...

Even those who have been some of the strongest proponents of Covid elimination are changing their tune across the ditch.  
Kiwi epidemiologist at Melbourne University Tony Blakely was all for elimination last year and still endorses the current lockdown, but in a more relaxed state. 
He argues that Victoria should do what NSW were doing in regards to their restrictions. 
Open up to let businesses start back up and movement restrictions would expand to 10 kilometres. 
And as the vaccine rate increases, cases would drop and the restrictions can be further eased.  
Tony Blakely told Mike Hosking the combination of Delta and lockdown weariness creates an environment in which elimination becomes difficult. 
“I think it’s two things; it’s Delta, it’s really slippery it’s damn hard and we’ve probably got lucky last time and unlucky this time. The second reason is that we’ve had over 200 days in lockdown and people’s compliance is dropping. If you have just 5 percent of the population’s compliance dropping that’s enough for Delta to say ‘Yee haa I’m away.” 
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I’m feeling for the South Island this morning, who really shouldn’t be here, but here we all are.  
They have a right to be more frustrated than anyone. And even though we had suspicions short and sharp would be no such thing, this seems a stretch for the South Island with zero cases. 
And every week this goes on, it’s more dire for us economically. Which makes me wonder what the handful of commentators saying the economy is in robust shape for this, are basing that on. 
If it’s based on printing more money, then your economic bar is very low. 
If it involves us all rushing out post lockdown and buying more cars and houses, I think that’s misreading the room.  
This is different; Delta has changed everything.  
Inflationary pressures are mounting, economic gains have stalled, we have no collective faith that we will stay out of lockdowns based on the Government’s flawed elimination strategy, people’s confidence will be more negatively affected this time round. 
If it’s based on borrowing more, how much more before it gets dangerous? The Government’s smugness around our economic performance and position is misplaced and concerning.  
With tourism shut down and other industries impacted by surging input costs, supply chain shortages and no labour, our economy is in a precarious position.  
Add to this the economic direction Xi Jinping’s taking in China, which is giving rise to a slowing if not recessionary China, which would have a knock-on effect for Australian and New Zealand economies.  
And the picture, despite all Grant Roberston’s smiles, does not look good.  
This is where the Government falls over - theory versus reality.  
It forgets in smiling and telling everyone that everything‘s fine, that a lot of these people are business owners, employers, tourist operators, suppliers, franchise holders, importers, exporters, people at the coal face.  
They’re the ones who’ll tell you the truth; it’s not fine. 
The Government simply has to change its narrative and start getting real with New Zealanders. It has to change its myopic thinking that what saved us last time will save us again.  
We are only just beefing up our vaccine rollout, 8 months behind the rest of the world. We have not even ordered booster shots yet.  
The fact we have known since last year that vaccination was critical, that effective procurement and distribution was critical, and yet we still sat on our hands, beggars belief.  
A Delta outbreak was entirely foreseeable and the stark lack of planning, preparedness and scaling up of contact tracing, testing and surveillance is actually inexcusable. Businesses must be tearing their hair out. Ongoing and repeat lockdowns and closed borders are no longer luxuries we can afford.  
To smile and keep saying we can afford all of it is simply dishonest.

A call for employers to cut their staff some slack as they juggle their responsibilities. 
Under Alert Level 4, the majority of kiwis are working from home.  
Working parent advocate Emma McLean told Kate Hawkesby employers need to have realistic expectations. 
"They wouldn't expect us to turn up to work with our three children, yet they're expecting us to work just like we do we don't have them when we're at home, so there's got to be allowances." 
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Businesses are calling for some certainty as Level Four extends across the country.
Business advocate Phil O'Reilly told Mike Hosking the directions about how businesses can operate are hopeless.
"Business is still unclear, you still can't open a butcher. It's as if we've learned nothing from Level Four lockdown and hopefully the Government would have, they haven't updated their website much at all on that, practices haven't changed."
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