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Director general of health Ashley Bloomfield (Illustration: Simon Chesterman)
Director general of health Ashley Bloomfield (Illustration: Simon Chesterman)

SocietyApril 23, 2020

Covid-19: New Zealand cases mapped and charted, April 23

Director general of health Ashley Bloomfield (Illustration: Simon Chesterman)
Director general of health Ashley Bloomfield (Illustration: Simon Chesterman)

The latest in our series of charts, graphics and data visualisations by Chris McDowall. David Garcia worked with Chris to 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 so use your mouse or thumb to hover over each graph for more detail.

Note for users of The Spinoff app: if the charts below are not appearing, please update your app to the latest version.

There were two further deaths related to Covid-19 today, bringing the total to 16. A patient has died who has been very unwell in the Intensive Care Unit in Dunedin hospital with Covid-19 since April 7. She was in her 60s and had underlying health conditions. The second is the death of a resident of the Rosewood rest home in Christchurch.

This afternoon’s Ministry of Health figures report that the total number of confirmed and probable Covid-19 cases stands at 1,451 (1,112 confirmed and 339 probable). A total of 1,065 people have recovered, an increase of 29 since yesterday.

There were two new confirmed cases in the last 24 hours. We are in the strange situation that there is one fewer confirmed case than yesterday. This is because three cases that were reported yesterday have been reclassified as “under investigation”. The uncertainty relates to whether they were previously counted in Uruguay’s case total before arrival in New Zealand. If so, the ministry seeks to avoid double-counting in reporting to the World Health Organisation. There was one new probable case.

The number of significant clusters with 10 or more cases remains at 16. There are eight people in hospital, which is three fewer than yesterday. One of these people is in Middlemore’s intensive care unit.

Yesterday, 6,480 tests were processed. This is the highest number of tests processed in a single day. The ministry reported averaging 4,445 Covid-19 lab tests per day during the week ending 22 April. A total of 101,277 lab tests have been conducted since January 22. There are 84,659 test supplies in stock down from 87,701 yesterday.

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.

The overall downward trend of active case counts that started around April 8 continues. Note how the blue curve is levelling off, while the purple bars continue to decline. This means that there are very few new cases getting reported while existing cases steadily recover. It is exactly what we want to see.

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 (no change at 16), Waitematā (no change at 212), Auckland (down one to 186) and Waikato (up one to 186) remain the four district health boards with the largest number of active cases. The three cases that were removed from the statistics were in Counties Manukau DHB.

There are 16 significant clusters under investigation by the Ministry of Health. Four more cases have been linked to clusters: two at the Christchurch Rosewood residential care facility, one at the World Hereford Conference in Queenstown and one at an Auckland aged residential care facility.

This chart shows cases by the date they were first entered into EpiSurv, ESR’s public health surveillance system. 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 that were entered on an earlier date as ‘under investigation’ or ‘suspected’ whose status has now been changed to confirmed or probable.

The same broad trend that we see in the other charts is evident here. Fewer and fewer new cases. Keep up the good work, people.

Keep going!