The latest in our series of charts, graphics and data visualisations by Chris McDowall. David Garcia also helped create today’s charts.
This work is entirely funded by the generosity of The Spinoff Members
These posts collate the most recent statistics and present them as charts and maps. The Ministry of Health typically publishes data updates in the early afternoon, which describe the situation at 9am on the day of release. These data visualisations are interactive – use your mouse or thumb to hover over each graph for more detail.
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This afternoon’s Ministry of Health figures report that the total number of confirmed and probable Covid-19 cases stands at 1,349 (1,064 confirmed and 281 probable). A total of 546 people have recovered, an increase of 75 since yesterday.
One person died overnight, bringing the total number of deaths to five. The man who died was linked to a cluster of cases at the Rosewood aged residential care facility in Christchurch. He was the third person from that cluster to die.
There were 15 new confirmed cases reported in the last 24 hours and four new probable cases. The number of significant clusters with 10 or more cases increased by two to 15. There are 15 people in hospital, an increase of one overnight. There are now four people in intensive care units – one each in Wellington, Middlemore, Dunedin and North Shore hospitals. The Dunedin patient remains in critical condition.
Yesterday, 1,660 tests were processed. Once again this was a significantly smaller testing volume than in recent days. It will be interesting to see whether this number tracks upwards after the Easter period. The ministry reported averaging 3,230 Covid-19 lab tests per day during the week ending April 12. A total of 62,827 lab tests have been conducted since January 22. There are 66,101 test supplies in stock.
This chart compares active and recovered cases. Active cases are confirmed or probable cases of Covid-19 where the person has neither recovered nor died. Recovered cases are people who were once an active case, but are at least 10 days since onset and have not exhibited any symptoms for 48 hours.
Once again there was a decrease in the number of active cases – from 855 active cases yesterday down to 798 this morning. Aside from a slight uptick on Wednesday, the active cases total has trended slowly downwards for the last week.
The symbol map shows confirmed and probable Covid-19 cases arranged by district health board. In keeping with the relatively small number of new cases, there is minimal change in regional counts. Southern (209), Waitematā (195), Waikato (177) and Auckland (176) remain the four district health boards with the largest number of active cases.
There are 15 significant clusters under investigation by the ministry of health. A significant COVID-19 cluster is when there are ten or more cases connected through transmission and who are not all part of the same household. The cluster count includes both confirmed and probable cases.
There are two new significant clusters since yesterday. One is a Christchurch workplace where the virus origin has been traced to overseas exposure. The other is an Auckland aged residential care facility where the source of the virus is unknown.
This chart shows cases according to their original “date of report” rather than the “date the case was classified as confirmed/probable”. This is a subtle but important distinction as there is sometimes a lag between a “potential” case getting updated to “probable” or “confirmed”, yet the date of report stays the same.
The same broad trend that we see in the other charts is evident here. There is a downward trend in the number of cases.
Note that the number of cases reported on a particular date may not match the number of cases reported in the last 24 hours. This is because the number of confirmed and probable cases reported in the last 24 hours includes cases which were entered on an earlier date as “under investigation” or “suspected” whose status has now been changed to confirmed or probable.