How are booster rates asking your adults?
…the figures are here:
So over a million boosted, but not everyone is eligible yet, for example I’m not eligible until next month. (We are working based on a four-month gap) Our vaccine rollout went in stages: firstly border workers and their families/close contacts, then the elderly and those with serious comorbidities, then people with less serious comorbidities (like me), then everyone else. So a lot of people won’t be eligible until March/April.
That’s a very sensible schedule, and your overall numbers look really good. You’re likely to get a ton of infections, but with any luck, you won’t get a ton of deaths or overload your hospitals. Good luck!
…I’m ready for whatever Omicron throws my way!
It is a very similar, rigid approach to that which the UK took for boosters (and original vaccinations) and it certainly meant that the most vulnerable were pretty well protected even as large numbers of infections were seen. So a similar approach bodes well for minimising severe illness and deaths.
Well, based on my personal experience (my 3-times vaxxed mom just died last week of covid) I observe that the most vulnerable may not be well protected by vaccines, and if community spread is broad enough, you WILL get some deaths. But many many fewer than without widespread boosters.
Very sorry to hear that. But at least you know that you did the best you could.
I’m so sorry to hear that, my best wishes to you and your family.
And you are right in what you say, some of the most vulnerable may well not be fully protected from the virus no matter what we do.
From a public health policy point of view we can definitely say that a targeted vaccine and booster campaign gives the best protection, to the most vulnerable people, at the earliest opportunity. But that’s little consolation from a personal point of view like yours, sadly it isn’t ever going to be perfect.
What impressed me the most was NZ’s extremely high rates of vaccination (first two doses) among adults. If i read the charts right, it’s 94% overall, and more than 90% among everyone but Northlanders (86%), Tairawhiti (89%), Wanganui (89%), and “overseas/unknown” (16%). Way to go, NZ.
You are likely to be a natural experiment for “how does a population fare with only vaccination, and essentially no prior infection”. I’m rooting for ya.
…I’m sorry 
My condolences.
…today’s NZ update: 97 new community cases. Looking at the latest media release, they might not be sequencing cases that are epidemiologically linked to previously reported cases which will make a breakdown of cases (between Omicron and Delta) tricky from now on.
There are now eight people in hospital, but nobody in ICU.
39 cases are all linked to the Soundsplash music festival. Two dozen crew on a container ship are experiencing Covid-like symptoms and 3 crew have tested postive, the ship is under quarantine.
There are 58 new cases at the border. The new cases came from UAE, UK, USA, Germany, Singapore, India, Albania, Australia, Egypt, Malaysia, Canada, Czech Republic, Qatar and Mexico.
In New South Wales the number of people in ICU have come down quite substantially, they now have 186 in ICU, and 2,693 hospitalizations. Cases seem to have stabilised at about 13,000 per day now. Deaths have held steady between 20 and 30 a day, but today was one of the worst, with 49 
…eek.
Waste water testing for Covid tested positive just down the road, from one of my favourite photo locations, Moa Point. Here’s an old photo of mine of the place I won’t be visiting for a while now LOL.
That is a remarkable photo. What’s going on with the misty effect around the rocks? Is that motion blur of the water or is it actually mist?
I’m going to guess a long exposure. It’s a common technique when photographing seashores and waterfalls.
Seconded. That’s exactly what it looks like.
But good that you are doing wastewater testing – it’s a highly accurate leading indicator, and it’s not affected by who happens to decide to test, whether tests are available, etc.
…yep. Its a long exposure 
Camera on a tripod, hold it open for a few seconds to make the waves look all misty. Here is another couple, from the same place.
The sewer outfall is just offshore from here, I think I was sitting on the old pipes when I took these photos
Yeah, we’ve been waste water testing from the beginning, but I think this is the first time its been detected down the road from me as a leading indicator as opposed to a result from somebody in managed isolation. We still have a functional contact tracing system: but we are expecting this to break once we hit a thousand cases per day.
Our strategy has now shifted to a series of “strategic retreats.” We are still doing what we did with previous variants. That means contact tracing every single case. It means our testing regime is almost completely PCR. But as we hit certain metrics (the first will be a thousand cases per day) the protocol shifts. Case management will shift from daily phone-calls to daily texts/emails. They will start to distribute and we will to use rapid tests, prioritising PCR testing for priority populations. Isolation for positive cases shifts from 14 days to 10 (unlike in the US where it is still 5 days), and close contacts shifts to 7 days. The detailed plan is here:
Effectively we’ve had to shift from a “Cold War” situation, with a hard border with occasional incursions, to fighting an “insurgency”.
NSW update just in: everything about the same as yesterday, 13,524 cases, 2,663 in hospital, 182 in ICU, 52 lives lost
…NZ update today:
103 new community cases: this will be an undercount because “a technical issue with the reporting systems” means that 40 cases were not entered correctly, and will show up in tomorrows numbers. The breakdown of the spread:
56 cases in Auckland (with an additional 40 to be added tomorrow) , the rest were: Northland (4), Waikato (12), Tairāwhiti (1), Bay of Plenty (14), Rotorua (8), Hawke’s Bay (3), MidCentral (1), Taranaki (1), Wellington (2) and Nelson Tasman (1). One of the Wellington Locations of Interest is my local supermarket. Glad I switched to contactless delivery last week
It doesn’t look like we will be getting a breakdown on Delta/Omicron cases any more.
We had one more person pass away today They were admitted to hospital on the 21st of January, so it was likely a Delta case, and they were the person in ICU from yesterdays numbers. Today we have 11 in hospital, with none in ICU.
“There were also 37 cases at the border, with cases arriving from India, Australia, UK, Spain, Qatar, Fiji, Lebanon, UAE, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and the USA.”
If you have people from other countries arriving at the border, and being tested and quarantined, then I don’t understand why NZ citizens are not being allowed to return.
A pregnant New Zealand journalist says she has had to turn to the Taliban for help after being prevented from returning to her home country due to quarantine rules.
Bellis then took the extraordinary step of contacting the Taliban to see if she could return safely to Afghanistan. Senior Taliban contacts said yes, and she has been in Kabul ever since.
With New Zealand’s border reopening delayed, she applied for an emergency MIQ spot but was rejected on January 24.
“We had submitted 59 documents to Immigration New Zealand and MIQ, from ultrasounds proving due date to a letter from the obstetrician talking about the consequences of stress on a pregnant woman and her baby. You name it, bank statements, proof of my resignation and that I had to leave Qatar, I had it all,” she told RNZ.
Head of MIQ Chris Bunny has said the process is “fair and consistent”, and while the application was initially rejected the team stayed in touch with Bellis to offer assistance about a new application.
They are allowed. Those are the people arriving at the border. The problem is the numbers at quarantine are limited so there are more people wanting to return than there are rooms for them.