The Covid resurgence cluster is now at 17 people. Chris McDowall presents the latest information in visual form.
With thanks to the Science Media Centre.
At today’s 1pm press briefing the director general of health, Ashley Bloomfield, announced 13 new cases of Covid-19 detected outside isolation or quarantine in the Auckland region. All of these cases are linked to the initial family of four who tested positive. This constitutes a new significant cluster of 17 related cases. Both Bloomfield and the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, cautioned that these numbers are expected to increase over the coming days.
This chart summarises all currently active cases of Covid-19. The pink bars represent the 17 community transmission cases. Thirteen of these cases are in Counties-Manukau, one is in Auckland and three are in Waitematā. In addition to the new cluster, there are 19 cases of people who have recently returned from overseas and tested positive in managed isolation and quarantine facilities.
This chart presents the same data, but summarised according to age groups. Note the age range of people in the new cluster. Although there is a pronounced spike of people in the 50–59 group, there are cases in every cohort up to 60–69.
There were long queues at Covid-19 testing stations yesterday. This chart only captures a slice of that activity as it shows the number of tests processed and not the number of swabs taken. You can still see a significant uptick from 4,225 tests on Tuesday to 6,006 tests processed yesterday. I expect we will see an even larger increase in tomorrow’s data.
Bloomfield announced that all new cases will now be housed in quarantine facilities. This is a change in policy from when the country was previously at alert levels four and three and most positive cases isolated at home.
This chart summarises the number of managed isolation facilities in different regions, their capacity and current occupancy levels as of midnight Wednesday. At that time, just over three-quarters of available facilities were occupied nationally, although this number is significantly higher in Auckland (86%). If numbers continue to rise, these occupancy numbers will climb over coming days.