In that case there could easily be more than 100 people infected by now and a strict lockdown is our only available option. But because there’s no clear link to the border, it’s also possible the virus has been spreading undetected for a significant period of time. If that’s the case, we might still get away with only a handful of cases. “The one thing that could get us out of jail is if contact tracing or genome sequencing establish a close link to the border with minimal community exposure. Although it hasn’t yet been confirmed, it’s almost certain this case is the Delta variant of Covid-19 because all cases in MIQ over the last few weeks have been Delta. Vaccination will help slow the outbreak, but coverage is still too low to make a big difference. “Data from the outbreaks last year and the fact that the Delta variant is about twice as infectious, suggest that Alert Level 3 would not have been enough to control the outbreak if community transmission has become established, whereas Level 4 likely will be. “Moving the whole of New Zealand to Alert Level 4 is definitely the right move and will give us the best chance of nipping this outbreak in the bud before it can get too large. Professor Michael Plank, Te Pūnaha Matatini and University of Canterbury, comments: Additionally, it is important to be careful about scams and attacks that might play on your anxieties, such as phishing attacks that ask you to click on a link that purports to be related to COVID-19.”Ĭonflict of interest statement: I have had interactions with the Ministry of Health around digital contact tracing in an academic capacity, but am not employed or paid by them. It is all the more important to take a moment to double-check information that you receive before passing it on. Many of us will have seen this happen this afternoon as rumours were flying around about the case and what that might mean for us. “It is also important to note that at a time of high stress, this is the exact environment that is conducive for misinformation to spread.
If you can’t use NZ COVID Tracer, then make sure that you are keeping your own written records of where you have been and when.
#POSSIBILITY OF A SECOND LOCKDOWN MANUAL#
“It is not too late to use NZ COVID Tracer to add manual entries so that you have one place to keep track of where you have been and when. Contact tracing allows us to do that more quickly and help us avoid widescale lockdowns.
In the unfortunate event that you get COVID-19, or someone that you have interacted with gets COVID-19, isolating you is the most effective way to reduce the spread of the disease. “As the risk level increases, it becomes more important that everyone is collecting the information that they need to support contact tracing. That will be one of the contributors to the decision to enter a lockdown, because the government does not have confidence that we, as a country, have enough information to support rapid contact tracing. Unfortunately, we know from the national statistics that the vast majority of New Zealanders have not been participating enough. It is reassuring that the identified active case was using NZ COVID Tracer to help keep track of where he had been. “We know that fast isolation of infected individuals is key to containing any outbreak of COVID-19, and contact tracing is a critical part of the process. Dr Andrew Chen, Research Fellow, Koi Tū – Centre for Informed Futures, University of Auckland, comments: The man, a 58-year-old male from Devonport, on Auckland’s North Shore, had also travelled to Coromandel. It comes after a community case was discovered in Auckland. The country is going back into a level 4 lockdown at 11:59pm tonight, for just the second time since the pandemic began.
0 kommentar(er)
