After a winter wave that peaked at 11,500 reported cases and 836 people in hospital a day, experts suggest the wave is now easing, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in The Bulletin.

Lowest case number since February

I vividly recall the day the omicron variant prompted a move to the red traffic light setting this year because it was also the day I slogged my way through the Auckland half-marathon. The press conference news came through on January 23 as I was on the harbour bridge. That wave peaked in March, declined to a seven-day rolling average of 4,616 in late June and then climbed again for the second wave which peaked at 11,548 in mid-July. Yesterday the country recorded 2,618 Covid cases, the lowest since late February. While weekend case numbers are often lower, the seven-day rolling average is also down from 5,441 last Sunday, to 4,302 cases.

Finding the plateau

Epidemiologist Michael Baker said the lowest daily total for nearly six months was “good news” as well as being very meaningful. “The thing we’re all looking for, is we know we’re coming out of this second wave of omicron – and we’re going to descend to a new plateau, just as we did after the first wave – but we don’t yet know what that plateau will be,” Baker said. Baker said it would be a few weeks before it was clear that this wave was over and that even though warmer months are coming, Covid-19 doesn’t rely on cold conditions to spread.

Hospitalisations down 30% in three weeks

Hospitalisations, a metric that lags case numbers, have also been declining over the last three weeks, down from this wave’s high of 836 to 587. Last Sunday 675 were in hospital. There are now 1,750 deaths confirmed as attributable to Covid, either as the underlying cause of death or as a contributing factor. Hospitals have been hit hard by winter illnesses and staff absenteeism as a result of illness. The number of people who were off sick for more than a week almost doubled in the three months to the end of June, according to Stats NZ. This morning, Stuff’s Michelle Duff looks at whether that feeling that absolutely everyone has been sick this winter is backed up by the data.

“We’re going to be managing Covid, one way or another, possibly forever”

Newsroom’s Marc Daalder spoke to the new deputy director-general of health, Andrew Old, who is heading up the new Public Health Agency. Old assumes responsibility for our Covid response in this role. He freely admits we’ve moved out of the emergency phase of the response and his job is now to bed in a strategy for managing the virus in the long term. “I think everyone recognises now that we’re going to be managing Covid, one way or another, possibly forever,” he said. He would also like us to stop referring to him as the new Ashley Bloomfield. A fair request.