The Southern District Health Board has released more details on the 82 cases of Covid-19 in the South, including for the 13 new confirmed cases which were announced by health boss Dr Ashley Bloomfield earlier today.
The Ministry of Health revealed 13 new cases in the South today bringing the total number to 83.
It comes after Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield revealed there were 76 new confirmed cases of Covid-19, bringing the total number of cases across New Zealand to 589.
A total of 12 people were in hospital with Covid-19 including one in Dunedin Hospital.
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82 cases confirmed, plus one probable in Southern district
The Southern District Health Board released further details on the Southern cases this evening.
"The total number of Southern cases is now 83. This includes 82 confirmed cases and 1 probable case. One Southern case is in Dunedin Hospital in a designated Covid-19 ward."
The SDHB has provided a breakdown of the numbers of Covid-19 cases in each location by territorial authority.
"More specific locations will not be disclosed while case numbers are low in a TA area. This is to protect patient confidentiality," it said.
Numbers by Territorial Authority are as follows:
- Queenstown Lakes (31)
- Dunedin (30 plus 1 probable)
- Invercargill (9)
- Central Otago (5)
- Clutha (3)
- Southland (2)
- Gore District (1)
- Other/undefined (1)
While there can be a lag between confirmation of cases and public notification of those cases, this lag does not create any public health risk, the SDHB said
Anyone who is tested for Covid-19 goes into immediate self-isolation while awaiting results and further advice. Contact tracing starts for people who test positive as soon as test results are received. Close contacts of the positive case are identified and informed and isolated immediately.
More specific details have been released by the SDHB on 12 of the 13 confirmed cases which were announced by the Ministry of Health earlier today. Details pertaining to one case have not been released.
Seven of the new cases were in the Queenstown Lakes District. The SDHB also confirmed today that it was investigating possible community transmission in Queenstown after a nurse at Lakes District Hospital was confirmed as having the virus.
Dunedin had the next highest amount of new confirmed cases with four and Invercargill was confirmed as having one new case.
Earlier today the Ministry of Health released some details about 12 of the new cases, including their age and whether they had recently been overseas.
The Ministry data records that 11 cases from the SDHB area had not been overseas. It is not recorded whether a 12th case has travelled overseas.
The details for the 13th new case in the South were not immediately available on the Ministry website.
The majority of cases New Zealand wide were still linked to overseas travel, but 10 were now confirmed as being spread by community transmission.
The addition of today's 13 new cases in the South means the Southern District Health Board area continues to have the second highest number of cases after Auckland DHB.
A major reason why the South has so many cases is the cluster linked to the World Hereford Conference in Queenstown.
This is linked to 19 confirmed and probable New Zealand cases, including many in the South. It is also linked to two confirmed overseas cases.
However, the number of cases linked to the conference has not climbed as rapidly in recent days, meaning a large majority of recent new cases in the South are not linked to the conference.
As of today, the SDHB area continues to have the most cases per head of population, by some distance.
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Comments
Are we over-reacting? If the flu results in 0.1% deaths p.a., that is approx 5,000, or 13 per day, along with lots of hospitalisations. I do not remember a daily running total of flu infections, deaths etc. We seem to be destroying our economy & way of life with this lockdown. Whilst every death is unfortunate, we have to ask, are the measures in place for the "cure" worse than the virus? Time will tell. In the mean time, would not everyone wearing a mask as in South Korea, Taiwan, HK or Singapore manage the spread? These countries seem to be soldering on and not destroying their livelihoods, even though the virus' effects are large, but not devastating as in NZ.
OtagoIdeas - What are you talking about. This is nothing like the flu. We're talking a death rate of 5% if you are lucky, Italy is currently sitting over 11%. Is your "way of life" more important than peoples lives?
Tim, if everyone wears a mask (even a home made one) then transmission is lower, much lower- the Asian countries have proven that- look at their testing and infection rates. Italy's situation has an average 2.7 co-morbid effects per death, meaning 98%+ of deaths have another factor contributing, eg diabetes, heart disease, pneumonia, etc, with an average age of 82 years. Lombardy is heavily industrialised and polluted meaning the lungs of the general population were more prone to infection. Also, we seem to forget if you do no test the whole population and only test those with symptoms then the "11%" you mention skews the result. Every life cut short is a tragedy, but destroying our economy will/has lead to increase in suicides, family breakdowns- those secondary effects may be worse- time will tell.