Today’s Covid cases as Cabinet meets to decide traffic light settings

Cabinet will today focus on the number of people in hospital with Covid-19 as it considers whether the country will move down traffic light settings.

The Ministry of Health is due to release a statement at 1pm.

The Government is reviewing traffic light settings, with the pressure on the health system after the country’s deadliest week one of the key factors in the decision.

Yesterday there were 8810 new community cases of Covid-19 including 690 in hospital and 26 in ICU.

The number of people with Covid-19 in hospital was slightly higher than Saturday’s 678 cases, but significantly down on the record 1016 patients almost two weeks ago.

Yesterday was also the first time New Zealand’s daily case total dipped below 10,000 since February 24, when 6137 cases were reported.

There were also 18 deaths reported yesterday which includes people who have died over the past five days bringing the total number of Covid-linked deaths to 396.

While Covid deaths are rising, case numbers have been trending downwards and the pressure on the health system has been easing.

Auckland’s Omicron outbreak is estimated to have peaked four weeks ago with Wellington also seeing a decline in case numbers, according to one expert.

Today is the last day the Government is requiring businesses to use vaccine passes. Photo / George Novak

However, other cases in other parts of the country including Canterbury are still rising or only just plateauing.

From tomorrow vaccine passes will be scrapped and vaccine mandates will be limited to the health and disability, aged care, Corrections and border workforce sectors.

Politicians will consider whether the country – or select regions – will move from the red traffic light setting to orange, a change that would mean there are no longer limits on how many people can gather indoors.

Under the red setting, indoor events are restricted to a 200-person limit, with everyone seated and separated, and wearing masks unless eating or drinking.

At orange, there are no limits on indoor gatherings, no requirements to be seated or separated, and masks are still required, but can be taken off to eat and drink.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told AM this morning that Cabinet was taking a regular review of its settings and that it had not been triggered by anything in particular.

The key consideration around moving was less about the number of cases, but more about hospitalisations.

“The idea is to move at a point where we believe the hospitalisations have stabilised and if there was a small number that might be contributed it wouldn’t have an impact on our hospital system.”

She said it wasn’t the right time to move to the orange setting in some parts of the country based on the health response, but the Government had the ability to take different approaches in different parts of the country for example in Auckland where cases were declining.

“We will be careful, we will be cautious.”

Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said last week that the rate of hospitalisations and ICU patients would be one of the things that Cabinet would weigh up when considering the country’s traffic light settings today.

Those issues would lag behind the drop in case numbers from the peak.

Hipkins said there was nervousness in the community and the public sentiment was “finely balanced” about where we sit in the Covid response at the moment, but he said people mainly accepted that we were now living with Covid.

Covid-19 modeller Dion O’Neale from Te Pūnaha Matatini said mask wearing was really effective in preventing transmission and protecting both you and those around you and also gave extra protection to those at higher risk.

It was hard to quantify exactly what impact they provided because it depended on the quality and fitting of the mask, but overseas research showed a well-fitted mask was highly effective, he told RNZ.

O’Neale supported anything that meant that people were wearing high quality and well-fitted masks more of the time because they would be good for stopping the spread of Covid-19 and a “bunch of other airborne respiratory illnesses” once the border reopened.

Ventilation was also another good form of protection, he said.

National wants the traffic light settings abolished, but supported other protective measures such as mask wearing and restrictions on gathering limits remaining in place.

National Covid-19 Response spokesperson Chris Bishop told RNZ the traffic light settings were generally pretty confusing and had never really been followed.

Bishop said the traffic light system could still be kept in reserve just like the alert level system in case a new worrying variant emerged and it needed to be rolled out again.